Chocolate Musings

As you can see from the photo below,  we visited Hershey, Pennsylvania, this month.

I don't have anything too profound to say this month, but I do have chocolate on on mind, so I'll briefly touch on some chocolate-related topics.

We spent the night before Easter at The Hotel Hershey.  When we opened the door to our room on Easter morning, we found that the Easter Bunny had left us baskets of Hershey products.  We still have some of that candy left.  Between the candy we bought, made ( The photo at the top of this post was taken at the "Create your own Candy Bar" attraction ), and got for free ( They give you lots of free chocolate at the various attractions at Hershey - we were given 4 candy bars when we checked into the hotel ), we'll be eating Hershey's chocolate late into May.

   I was looking over some of that Easter chocolate on our kitchen table, when I noticed a Krackel miniature bar.  That got me thinking about how bad a job Hershey has done promoting the Krackel bar.  For those who are not aware, a Krackel bar is Hershey's version of a Nestle Crunch Bar.  I'm going to assume 99.9 % of people who grew up in the USA know what a Nestle Crunch is, but if you're not from the USA or grew up in the USA with health-nut parents who didn't let you watch TV, the old TV add below will tell you everything you need to know about Nestle Crunch.



There's really not much a difference between Nestle Crunch and Krackel, but Nestle Crunch was ubiquitous during my childhood ( and according to Time Magazine, is one of the 13 most influential candy bars of all time ) while Krackel was nowhere to be seen.  Hershey has been the dominant chocolate brand in the USA for about a century, so I never understood why Hershey never made a real effort to go after the Nestle Crunch market share.  My first thought was that Nestle Crunch was too well-established before Krackel came along, but Krackel was introduced only one year after Nestle Crunch ( 1938 vs. 1937 ).  

Clearly some people prefer Nestle's milk chocolate to Hershey's milk chocolate, but considering how Hershey dominates the plain milk chocolate bar category, I'm surprised they didn't think it was worth the effort to promote Krackel more.  In any case, Crunch-vs-Krackel really does show the power of marketing.  If Hershey really wanted to sell the Krackel bar today, I think they'd be better off giving it the iconic brown wrapper and simply calling it "Heshey's Milk Chocolate with Puffed Rice".

Speaking of iconic things related to chocolate, I re-watched the 1971 Willy Wonka movie ( with my kids ) a few days ago.   Seeing my kids watch it reminded me of what it was like to watch the movie as a child ( I must have been about 5 or 6 the first time I watched it on TV ).  While my kids loved it, and I love it now, I was absolutely terrified by that movie the first time I watched it.  I really though all those naughty kids were being killed each time they got eliminated from the competition.

Sucked under liquid chocolate and then fired like a cannon?
Getting the juiced squeezed out of your bloated body?
Falling down a chute that leads to an incinerator?
Being stretched like taffy?

Those Oompa Loompas scared me shitless.  They were like tiny little Angles of Death.  After watching that movie at the age of 5 or 6 six, I don't think I had the stomach to watch it again until I was about 13.

When I watched it a few days ago, I was struck by the traits that were considered to be signs of a poorly-raised child back in 1971 ( and back in 1964 when the book was written ).  I'm not surprised that one of "bad" kids was a spoiled brat, and gluttony's certainly not an admirable trait, but gum-chewing and TV-watching?  Really, Dahl couldn't think of anything worse than a kid who chews gum and a kid who watches TV?  Was gum-chewing really a big concern around 1964?  Sure, I guess it's bad manner's to chew gum with your mouth open, but if "she chews too much gum" is the worst thing somebody can say about your kid, then your kid is doing fine.

The "watches too much TV" kid is the most outdated reference in the movie.  In the age of the Internet and video games, most kids of today wouldn't understand why anyone would want to watch lots of TV.  Of course back in the 60s/70s, there were only a few stations, and the majority of shows on TV were mindless dreck.  Of course there's plenty of stupid TV shows today, but in the age of cable TV, you could spend all day watching intelligent programming on TV.  The age of the "boob tube" is over ( Hell, it's not even a tube anymore, though I must admit the HBO does show plenty of boobs ).  Considering how many devices people can use to view video content, people generally think of the content before they even consider the medium that delivers the content.

Anyway, I think it's just interesting to consider how much the world has changed in the last 40 years or so.  Interesting, but also a bit depressing it, because it makes me feel old.  I certainly think we live in a better world than we did 40 years ago, but did I really need to age 40 years to get to that world?

Oh, to end this on a lighter note, if you love the Willy Wonka movie, then you've got to see this:



Rich

A "brief" facebook tangent and Affirmative Action

The genesis of this post is a discussion I had on facebook - actually my wife's facebook account rather than my own.  As my small band of regular blog readers already knows, I still don't have a facebook account under my real name.  I know that may sound odd in this day and age, so I'll briefly explain why.

My first internet presence was on YouTube.  At some point in late 2006 or early 2007, I created a YouTube account with the Jets-inspired name MoLewis57 in order to make a comment on a video about Tom Brady.  Over time I became a fan of a few prominent YouTube vloggers of the day, and I was eventually inspired to make YouTube videos of my own.  I wound up making well over 100 videos, the vast majority of which were posted between September 2007 and February 2009.  Back then, I resolved to get myself a YouTube following without relying on family or friends at all ( I eventually did gain a modest audience - by the time I stopped making regular videos I had about 250 subscribers about 50 of which would comment on videos on a semi-regular basis ).  So, I didn't share my channel with the vast majority of my family and friends ( I didn't share it with any family/friends at all until I felt I had built up a decent audience on my own ), and I never used my real last name in any video or video comment.  I was also worried that the videos I was making might be in violation of my company's social media policy and I didn't want to risk getting in trouble at work.

So, I had resolved to be anonymous on the internet, and as my internet presence grew to include Twitter, Blogger, and facebook, I kept using the anonymous  "MoLewis57" name, and restricted my internet friends/followers to people I didn't know in real life ( There were eventually a handful of exceptions to this, but they were people who were generally not friends ( internet or real-life ) with most of the people I had befriended at Stuyvesant/Cornell ).

About 5 and a half years ago, my wife got her own facebook account.  She really had no intention of participating in social media , but she wanted to look at her friend's facebook pages to see stuff like baby pictures and the like ( Note: She's actually quite apprehensive about posting pictures of our own kids online, though I did convince her lately to post family photos from our recent Vegas trip to her facebook page ( Conversely, my "MoLewis" facebook page consists of almost nothing but posts/photos of our kids )).

Over the years, lots of my wife's friends and my friends have become part of the same social circles, so it wasn't long before my wife's list of facebook friends included most of my friends as well.  For a long time, I was content just to follow my friends' post on my wife's facebook page, but lately I've been participating a bit on my wife's page - participating so much that I've seriously considered switching my "MoLewis" facebook account over to my real name, and facebook-friending most of my real friends ( Advantage: I wouldn't have to put "From Rich" every time I post to my friends from my wife's facebook account.  Disadvantage: Candy Crush stuff, Farmville updates and all the other facebook game crap I couldn't care less about. ).

My recent participation in my wife's facebook page is primarily due to my interaction with two people: Johnny and Jerry.

Johnny is a friend of mine from Cornell ( we actually both went to Stuyvesant as well, but I didn't meet him until we got to Cornell ).  We roomed together during our sophomore year at Cornell, played quite a bit of pool together, and had a quite a few adventures ( including my first trip outside the good old USA ) that I won't go into here.  We both have our own lives and families these days, and I see him about as much as I see my other Cornell friends ( which is almost never, considering that I'm far too lazy make an effort to keep in touch with people these days - I've just been relying on weddings and kids birthday parties to do the "keeping in touch" work for me ).  However, while I don't see him much these days, he's one of the people that made college fun for me, and I still consider him to be a friend and an upstanding guy ( despite that fact that he's a Yankees fan and jumped-ship to become a Giants fan after the Jets lost the January 1983 AFC Championship game ).

Jerry also went to Stuyvesant and Cornell.  We didn't know each other at Stuy, and I don't think we exchanged any words between us at Cornell other than greetings in the presence of mutual friends.  However, we had enough mutual friends that I did hear some stories about him during our Cornell days and he very well may have heard some stories about me ( Let's face, it if you leave college without leaving behind some embarrassing stories about yourself, then you weren't really trying. ).  In any case, I think Jerry and my wife became facebook friends primarily because his sister and Ruth's sister are really good friends.

Over the years, I found myself reading's Jerry's post more often than the posts of any of my wife's other facebook friends, because Jerry I an occupy the same part of the political spectrum ( The part of the spectrum to the left of most politicians in the Democratic party ).  I agreed with most of his posts, and I enjoyed reading the arguments he would have with those on the Right who disagreed with him.  I never felt a need to participate in these discussions ( after all, this was my wife's facebook account, not mine ), but that started to change when Johnny started commenting on Jerry's posts.

Johnny's certainly to the right of me on the political spectrum, but I would not consider him to be Far Right.  In fact, I'd be very surprised to find out that he hasn't voted for both Democrats and Republicans over the years.  However, Johnny's political views are the kind of views that might be more likely to incite facebook vitriol from Liberals than the political views of the Far Right.  I've got a feeling that some Liberals consider those on the Far Right to be a lost cause not worth worrying about, but they may be more incensed by moderates who help Republicans get elected by being "willfully ignorant" ( I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote from one of the facebook quotes directed at Johnny. ).

In any case, some of the facebook arguments between Johnny and Jerry were not pretty, and it made me want to get involved.  While I agreed with the substance of most of Jerry's political statements, let's just say that we have different ideas about the best way to engage those on the other side of a political issue.  Also, while I can't read Jerry's mind, I believe that I'm probably more cynical about politics than he is, and that cynicism extends to both Democratic politicians and Liberal media outlets.  So, when Johnny would comment that Obama was being dishonest or that MSNBC is biased, Jerry would be more likely to defend Obama or MSNBC, while my response would be something along the lines of "Of course Obama is being less than honest - that's what any successful politician needs to do" or "Yeah, MSNBC is hard on the Right and takes it easy on the Left - what else is new?  Even so, it's still a helluva lot more 'Fair and Balanced' than Fox".

Back in February, I got engaged in a facebook discussion about a post Jerry made about Ron Paul and the MLK holiday.  I made the following comment about Libertarians and Civil Rights ...

Me: All that being said, if somebody did intentionally leave out the "pro-communist philanderer" part in an attempt to make Paul look racist, then they are being deceptive and missing the real insidiousness of the types of policies Libertarians like Paul support. Libertarians like Paul are against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ( Rand Paul has openly stated he's against it - I'll admit that I'm taking an educated guess that his dad feels the same way ) because they feel that government shouldn't be able to tell a private business what to do. I believe that most Libertarians are sincerely non-racist when it comes to interpersonal relations, but they also sincerely feel that if an owner of a private business wants to run his business in a racist way, the government should not be able to force him to do otherwise. They feel that people would have eventually started to shun racist businesses like "Whites Only" restaurants and that basic market forces would have eventually eliminated such racists businesses. However, in a place like the Deep South, that might have taken 1000 years to happen, and as they say, "Justice delayed is justice denied". This type of Libertarian philosophy is insidious because it allows people to support racists policies without feeling racist. That's more dangerous than straight-up in-your-face racism.

(  BTW, I few weeks after a made the post above, I saw a news story which illustrates exactly the kind of Libertarian thinking I was talking about.  See this article, particularly the following quote from a GOP lawmaker:

'"If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them,” Jensen told the Journal, advocating for the free market's role in promoting civil rights.' )

... and then Johnny and I had the exchange below ...

Johnny: Rich, interesting view on the Libertarians. I don't know much about them other than the basics. I had not thought of taking such views to that extreme. I think the govt SHOULD protect its citizens against things like racism. But it should do so equally, and the lefties seem to see racism from only one side. the righties? They probably do too, but they aren't even allowed to talk about racism except in code words. LOL

Me: I don't think the racial justice policies of the government can be color-blind until economic and political power is distributed more evenly among the racial groups in this country. A black business owner who wants to institute a "Blacks Only" hiring policy is just as racist as a white business owner who want to institute a "Whites Only" hiring policy, but racist white business owners have the potential to inflict far greater harm on society than racists black business owners, simply because whites have so much more economic power than blacks in this country. I'm not suggesting that laws should ignore racism against whites ( or any race ), but considering that all governments have limited resources, I think it makes make sense for laws and policies to be designed with a focus on racism-by-whites rather than racism-against-whites. This is why I don't have a problem with non-color-blind policies like affirmative action ( though I do think such policies need to be employed more intelligently to keep them from sometimes hurting the people they are trying to help. Malcolm Gladwell's take on this in "David and Goliath" is quite fascinating ) in today's USA. However, in tomorrow's USA, today's affirmative action laws would be silly. As most of us know, more than half the babies been born in the USA are non-white, so in a 100 years or so, whites will no-longer have the vast majority of economic power in the USA. I'll admit that phasing out obsolete affirmative action policies will be a challenge in the future, but I still think it is better to have such policies today than not have them.

Johnny: But Rich, isn't that similar to the Libertarian stance of wait it out, society will correct the wrongs? I believe in equal opportunity and meritocracy. Lowering standards to let a particular group pass the exam is wrong. Forcing a somewhat arbitrary percentage of new hires to be from a certain background is wrong. Further, I would say such practices promote the concept that the groups being "helped" are somehow inferior and in need of special rules to succeed.

Me: Actually Johnny, I don't think I'm making anything close to a Libertarian argument. A Libertarian might argue that we don't need Affirmative Action policies because demographic changes will eventually make Affirmative Action policies obsolete. I'm acknowledging that demographic changes will eventually make Affirmative Action policies obsolete, but I think we still need them now. However, I will admit that my feelings about Affirmative Action are conflicted and quite complicated - too complicated to sum up in a facebook post. All I'll say for now is that Affirmation Actions acts as a rather flimsy band-aid on a gaping wound in our society. I might have more to say later, but if I do, I'll write it a blog post and link to it.

Anyway, after more than a month, I've finally found the time to make that blog post.

As I implied above, I'm not an unadulterated fan of Affirmative Action.  There are all sorts of problems with Affirmative Action and I think there are better ways to create a more level playing field between racial and socioeconomic groups ( For example, as I mentioned in my "Occupy Wall Street, the 1%, and the Lucky Coin" post, I think that public school funding needs to be made more equitable between rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods ).

However, as Bill Clinton once said, I'm definitely in the "Mend it, don't end it" camp when it comes to Affirmative Action.

Before I get into why we should not "end it", I'd like to give an example of why we do need to "mend it".

A few months ago I read Malcom Gladwell's new book "David and Goliath".  One of the chapters in that book made me reconsider some of my ideas about Affirmative Action.

Malcolm Gladwell is a hell of a writer, but he's also the King of drawing broad conclusions based on anecdotal evidence.  That being said, I think there is some real substance behind the information he presents in the "Caroline Sacks" chapter in his new book ( and in pages 284-287 in the "Notes" section of the book ).

( Gladwell cites the academic articles below ...

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-008-9075-6

http://www.dartblog.com/documents/Elliott%20and%20Strenta.pdf

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ798217

http://ideas.repec.org/p/van/wpaper/vuecon-sub-13-00009.html

... plus research from the book below:

http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended-Universities/dp/0465029965

One of the authors of the book above recently participated in an NPR debate about this premise of his book.  I've provided a link to that debate below:

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/26/293767851/debate-does-affirmative-action-on-campus-do-more-harm-than-good

)

The primary conclusion of all the research above can be summarized as follows:

Consider two students ( student A and student B ) with equal academic credentials.  Let's say that Student A decides to attend a college in which he or she is among the least academically qualified of the entering freshman ( let's say the bottom 20% ).  Meanwhile, student "B" decides to attend a school at which he or she has academic qualifications in line with the average incoming freshman.  On average, student B will have a much more successfully academic career and post-academic career than student A.  If student A and B are both STEM majors ( Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics ), student B is more likely to remain a STEM major, and if Student A and B both wind up in the same post-college profession, student B is likely to have a more successful career.  If student A and B are law students, student B is more likely to pass the bar exam on the first try.

The same type of pattern holds ( though to a lesser extent ) if student A enters a school at which he/she has average academic credentials ( relative to his or her peers at the school ) and student B enters a school at which his/her academic credential are better than 80% than his/her peers.

Basically, doing poorly academic is bad for long-term success ( even at elite schools ) and doing great academically is great for long-term success ( even at average schools ).

Of course, not everyone will fit the "average" profile of the studies above ( There are a small percentage of people who will always rise to the challenge when placed in a difficult academic environment, and who will "play down to the competition" when then are placed in a non-challenging environment.  Those sorts of people should clearly always go to the most challenging school they are accepted to, but the studies above show that these types of people are the exception rather than the rule. ),  but the results of these studies have obvious implications for Affirmative Action.

It seems like we need to re-think how Affirmative Action is implemented in higher education.  The whole point of Affirmative Action is to help people.  It's a good thing to acknowledge the economic hardships, dangerous neighborhoods, family instability ( Ex: The absence of a father ), and sub-par public schools experienced by a disproportionate percentage of young people in the black community make it harder for the average black high school student to be as prepared for college as the average student of other races.  However, it's not a good thing to place these unprepared students into the very situations they are unprepared for.  We shouldn't just say "Well, you're not really prepared to handle the academic demands of Harvard.  Anyway, we'd like you to attend Harvard.  Good Luck!".  For Affirmative Action to really work in higher education we need to take to ...

1) Reduce the amount of preference given when admitting students under affirmative action ( Ex: If the average combined Math/Verbal SAT score of a student admitted to a college is 1400, and the average student admitted via Affirmative Action is has an SAT score of 1200, change the Affirmative Action criteria so that the average SAT score of an Affirmative Action student admitted in 1300 ).

2) Institute as many programs as possible to help Affirmative Actions students boost their credentials between the time they are admitted to the school and when freshman year begins.  I'm sure that a lot of elite schools already have programs like this, but more schools should have them, and even schools that already have them should try to do more.  If an institution is really committed to "diversity" ( rather than just paying it lip service ), then making sure you have diversity in your incoming freshmen class is not enough.  You should do what you can to help prepare any person you decided to admit to your school with less-than adequate academic qualifications ( even if that means offering optional free summer prep-classes after Freshmen/Sophomore/Junior years for any Affirmative Action students who are struggling. ).  If the Affirmative Actions students who are making your school "diverse" are dropping out of school at a higher rate than other students ( which certainly must be happening today, considering the studies above show that Affirmative Action students get lower grades than other students ), then you won't have the "diversity" you claim to care about in your graduating class.

Of course, some might say we shouldn't bother trying "to mend" broken Affirmative Action policies at all.  Many conservatives ( and a fair number of moderates ) feel that Affirmative Action is "reverse discrimination" which should be eliminated altogether.  Well, If you're a person who feels this way, consider the following scenario:

Pretend that you are married and have a 2-month-old child.  Pretend that some all-powerful being ( God, Aliens, Google, Nate Silver, or whatever great power you might choose to believe in ) tells you that you and your spouse will both die tomorrow, but that you will be given some input on the fate of your baby.  You are told that your child will be placed in the care of a random American family, and your child's appearance will be magically changed to match the race of the host family ( yes, if a mixed race couple is randomly chosen, your child will be mixed-race ).  The host family will accept the child as their own - the memory of the parent(s) will be magically altered so they'll believe that the child is their biological child.  However, the family will be chosen completely at random - the family could be a wealthy couple who lives in a mansion or a homeless single mother.  The all-powerful being gives you only one say in the matter.  You are given the opportunity to eliminate all families of one race from the pool of families before the random choice is made.  Given such a choice, which race do you eliminate from consideration as the host family for your child ( The all-powerful being insists that you make a choice.  He's says he'll kill your baby too if you don't make a choice - he's a bit of an Old Testament all-powerful being. )?

So, which race do you "vote off the island", so to speak?  Which race gives your child the least chance to be successful in America?  Well, if you truly believe that Affirmative Action is "reverse discrimination" which gives black people an unfair advantage over all other races, then the last type of family you'd eliminate from consideration would be a black family.  In fact, if you really thought "reverse discrimination" was real, you'd tell that all-powerful being to make sure your child didn't grow up as a white person in a white family, because all that "reverse discrimination" makes it too hard for a white person to succeed in American society.

Well, I've written far to much to want to waste another paragraph stating the obvious, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions.  I'll let you decide if we really live in society where black people have all sorts of advantages over other races thanks to the "reverse discrimination" of Affirmative Action.

Rich

Sochi? So what!

Oh Winter Olympics, how I tire of you!

Back when I was kid, I loved the Winter Olympics, but it's been a long time since it's excited me.

There are two reasons for this:

1) Way too much figure skating coverage.
2) Too much X-games crap.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind figure skating.  I watched all the Olympics figure skating in the 80's.  However, back then, it was just on for a few hours a night for a couple of nights during the Olympics.  Now it seems like it's on all the time.  4 years ago, NBC spent hours showing a post-competition figure skating exhibition rather than real Olympics events.  I understand why NBC is doing this.  I understand that figure skating gets big ratings, but it's all a little bit much for me.

I know my complaint about the X-games stuff might make me seem like an old-fogey, but I've never been a big fan of sports with subjective judging ( I get more than enough of that from figure skating )  and there's nothing more subjective about deciding who flipped around on a snowboard with the most style.  I also can't help but get the impression that the competitors care too much about style at the expense of substance.  All the snowboards seem to wear coats with hoodies, and air-catching hoodies are the last thing I would want to wear while I was flying through the air and flipping around.  I'll also never forget how Lindsey Jacobellis blew the gold medal in 2006 by being a hot dog at the end of the race:



However, the biggest reason the X-games stuff bothers me, is that I believe these events have been added deliberately to boost the medal totals for the USA ( The USA invented most of these winter X-games sports, so we are clearly going to do well in them ).  Gold medals for the USA means higher TV rating in the USA which means more money for everybody associated with the Olympics.  I guess you can't blame people for trying to make more money, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  I'm a purist when it comes to most sports, and just as I don't like all the extra rounds of revenue-generating baseball playoffs, I don't like the traditional sports of the Winter Olympic being overshadowed just so bigwigs associated with the Olympics can line their pockets.

In any case, I have a solution for all this.  I found a way to put the traditional Winter sports back in the spotlight in a way that will make for engaging TV.

You've heard of the decathlon; you've heard of the heptathlon; you may have even heard of the Winter Olympics sport biathlon - well, forget all that!  I've got something that tops all that - introducing ....

THE SNOWATHLON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The snowathlon will consist of 6 traditional Winter Olympics events.  It will take place over 6 days, and the winner will be crowned "The Greatest Winter Athlete in the World."

Much like the decathlon and heptathlon, competitors in the snowathlon will amass points in each event  depending on how well they do, and the points will be combined into a total snowathlon score.  The schedule of events will be as follows:

Day 1 : Figure Skating

That's right, figure skating.  We want to get TV viewers invested in the snowathlon contestants as early as possible, and what better sport to start with than the most popular Winter Olympics sport?  Besides, as you'll see from the events below,  snowathlon competitors will need to compete in all sorts of macho events.  There will be few things more entertaining that watching the macho male snowathlon competitors try to be graceful om the ice ( Think Emmitt Smith on "Dancing with the Stars", but on ice ).

Day 2: Speed Skating - 500 meter race

Much like the 100 meter dash in the decathalon, this sprint will test the explosive power of the competitors.

Day 3: Luge

Who doesn't like Luge?  Who wouldn't be thrilled to watch relatively inexperience lugers risk life-and-limb on the Luge track?

Day 4: Alpine Skiing - Downhill Race

Another exciting popular sport with just enough danger to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Day 5: Ski Jump

... AND ... we've managed bump up the danger factor another notch!  Just imagine surviving the Luge and the Downhill, only to have to tackle the Ski Jump the next day.

Day 6: Cross Country Skiing - 15 K race

I know that cross country skiing doesn't seem that exciting ( because it's not! ), but don't worry, I've found a way to bump up the drama.

I love the decathlon, but one of my biggest problems with it is that the final event is often anti-climactic.  The decathlon ends with a 1500 meter race - a race that most decathlon winners are not very good at.  The 1500 meter race is the only decathlon event that tests endurance, so elite decathletes with great speed and strength often enter the last event with a significant lead over the decathletes who excel at the 1500 meters.  So, it's not uncommon for the decathlon winner to finish half a lap behind the winner of the 1500 meter event.  It just doesn't seem right for the decathlon winner to finish in the back of the pack in the last event.

The snowathlon will have no such problems, because the 15 K cross country skiing race will feature a staggered start.  Whoever leads in the point standings after 5 events will get to start the race first.  All other competitors will start the race later, depending on how many points they are behind the leader.  Once all competitors have started the race, the points no longer matter.  The person who crosses the finish line first will be the winner of the snowcathlon ( Yes, I stole the idea from "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - so sue me! ( Unless you happen to be J. K. Rowling - in that case, please don't sue me! )).  

Just imagine how exciting this could be.  The point leader after 5 events might be a poor cross-country skier.  He ( or she - I want there to be a men's and women's snowcathlon ) is given a huge head start, but the rest of the field starts to gain on him rapidly as soon as they hit the course.  The leader struggles as the race wears on - he keeps looking over his shoulders.  He's so close to the finish line that he can practically feel the gold medal around he neck, but as you look at his face, you can tell he's close to passing out.  Meanwhile, the guys in second is moving like a freight-train.  You can almost feel his rapid breathes coming out of the TV screen.  Forget passing out - this guy's heart might explode!  It's only a matter of time before he catches the leader, but will he have enough time?

Yes, SNOWATHLON!  Hey, Winter Olympics, if you want me back, you gotta give me some SNOWATHLON!  I know it's a crazy idea, but as the old saying goes, "It's so crazy, that it just might work!"

Rich

The Fabulous Four

  Let me say this up front - I like boxing, but I probably shouldn't.  I recognize the inherent danger of the sport.  I'm aware of the barbarism of the sport.  I know that despite all the talk about the "Sweet Science", a boxer at his core is a person who beats people up for a living.  I know fighters wind up brain damaged and can occasionally die in the ring.  However, I love watching the old fights that gave Ali Parkinson's Syndrome, and I rooted for Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini both before and after the fight that killed Duk Koo Kim.  I would never approve of my 2 sons becoming boxers, yet I've spent many hours watching other people's sons put themselves at risk in the ring.  There's no getting around it - I'm a Grade A hypocrite when it comes to boxing.  However, I can't deny how watching a great fight makes me feel.  The sport probably should be outlawed ( and I would vote to outlaw it if it ever appeared on a ballot ), but I can't resist watching a great fight.

All that being said, I almost never watch boxing these days.  The best fighters don't fight each other nearly enough ( it's a crying shame that Mayweather/Pacquiao never happened ), and I've seen far too many fishy/incompetent/inexplicable  decisions from boxing judges over the years.  To be honest, I don't even think about boxing more than a few times a year.

So, why I am dedicating a blog post to boxing?  Well, it all has to do with a documentary I watched last Sunday night.  ESPN ran a documentary called "No Mas" about the Leornard/Duran rivalry, and it got me thinking about Welterweight/Middleweight boxing Renaissance of the 80's.  Back in days of the great heavyweight void between Ali and Tyson ( Larry Holmes was a great champ ( Better overall than Tyson, and I think he would have given Tyson a run for his money if they had fought each other in their respective primes ), but he was not an exciting fighter. ), 4 fighters owned the decade.  Those fighters were Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Tommy Hearns.

Throughout the 80's, each of these 4 fighters fought the other 3 in a round-robin for the ages.  I watched all of those fights, and since then I've had plenty of internal debates about where those 4 fighters should be ranked relative to each other.  I figured it might be fun to share my thoughts in a blog post.

Before revealing my rankings, I'd like my make few qualifying remarks about Roberto Duran.  I did a "Hagler Hearns Duran Leonard" Google search to find the picture at the top of this post, and upon doing that search it became clear that lots of other folks had taken the time to compare/contrast/rank these 4 fighters ( There's even a book on the subject called "Four Kings" and a documentary called "The Fabulous Four".).  The vast majority of boxing enthusiasts have Duran ranked at the top of the list.  The reasons people usually give for ranking Duran first are as follows:

1) He had a dominant Lightweight career in the 70's before joining the Welterweight and Middleweight ranks in the 80's.

2) He was older than the other 3 ( about 3 years older than Hagler, 5 years older than Leonard, and 7 years older than Hearns ) and was already 29 when he and Leonard kicked off the round-robin in June of 1980.  He was certainly past his prime for most of the 80's.

3) He was a natural Lightweight ( He fought 72 fights primarily as a Lightweight before moving up to the Welterweight division to face Leonard in 1980.  He went 71 -1 in those fights, his only loss coming in a 1972 non-title fight in which he temporarily moved up to the Light Welterweight division. ) who had to move up to the Welterweight and Middleweight divisions to fight Leornard/Hearns/Hagler.  He fought all his fights in the 80's against naturally bigger men.

When you add all that up, I can see why most people believe Duran had a better career than the other members of the "Fabulous Four".  However, in this piece, I'm only going to judge Duran in the context of the Fabulous Four rivalry ( BTW, nobody called these guys the "Fabulous Four" back in the day.  However, it seems like plenty of folks refer to that group by that name today, so I'll go with it. ).  Thus, I'm not going to consider his Lightweight record at all.  I'll give him some credit for being older and smaller than the other guys in the group, but I'll mostly judge him by how he looked in the ring against the other 3 guys.

I'm going to start by ranking each fighter on a 1 to 4 scale ( 1 being the best of the group - 4 being the worst ) in 3 attributes:

Skill: Pure boxing skill - the ability the land punches and defend oneself independent of punching power.

Power: Punching power - The ability to knock another guy out.

Chin: The ability to take a punch and avoid getting knocked out.  The attribute also includes "heart", the ability get off the canvas after being knocked down and continue fighting when hurt.

So, based on what I watched in the 80's, here are my rankings:

	Skill	Power	Chin
Duran	2	4	3
Hagler	3	2	1
Hearns	4	1	4
Leonard	1	3	2

After much thought, I've decided on the following overall rankings:

4) Tommy Hearns

There's a reason why they called him "The Hitman".  He's probably the greatest pound-for-pound puncher I've ever seen.  He knocked Duran old cold in the 2nd round of their fight, the only time Duran went down for the count in his 119 career fights.  He was by far the most exciting of the 4 fighters.  You never wanted to miss a second of a Tommy Hearns fight, because you always knew somebody might be hitting the canvas at any time.  Unfortunately, sometimes Tommy would be the one hitting the floor.  He certainly didn't have a terrible chin, but compared to the other guys on this list, he had a glass jaw.  If I could have given him a "Chin" ranking of 5, I would have.

3) Roberto Duran
2) Sugar Ray Leonard

The was never a doubt in my mind that I'd be rating Hagler 1st on this list, but I had a hard time deciding whether Duran or Leonard should be be ranked 2nd.  Rating one guy 3rd and the other 2nd second doesn't do justice to how close these guys are in my mind.  These guys are ranked so close together in my mind, that you would have a hard time sliding a sheet of paper between them.  Duran's an all-time great fighter, so it pains me to ranks him 3rd on any list of 4 fighters, but ultimately my Duran/Leonard ranking came down to two word: "No mas".

Now, I know some might think it's unfair to hold that one moment against Duran, but I think "No mas" is more than just about a single moment.  Duran has insisted for more than 30 years that he quit because of stomach cramps ( though he initial claimed he injured his shoulder ) that were the result of overeating he had done between the weigh-in and the fight.  Even if we take what he said at face value, I don't think the stomach cramps excuse absolves him of any blame for the loss.  It's common knowledge that after beating Leonard in their first fight, Duran partied and ate like there was no tomorrow.  In the months that followed a fight where he weighed-in at 147 pounds, he ballooned to more than 200 pounds.  After the Duran/Leonard rematch was arranged, he had to train like a madman to loose all that weight.  As the weigh-in approached he was popping diuretics like candy in order to make the weight, and after the the weigh-in he ate like a glutton in an attempt to regain his strength.  With all that in mind, it's certainly plausible that he had very bad stomach cramps during the Duran/Leonard II.  However, he only has himself to blame for any stomach cramps he felt that night.  Part of being great at any sport is being dedicated to your craft.  Part of being great at any sport, is having respect for that sport.  Duran's defeat of Leonard was the greatest moment of his career, and certainly had the right to be ecstatic and celebrate a bit.  However, to get as out of shape as he did when he knew a rematch was inevitable, show a disrespect for the sport of boxing.

Duran was great in his first fight with Leonard and certainly could have beaten Leonard again if he had been in shape for their rematch ( However, it's far from a foregone conclusion that an in-shape Duran would have beaten Leonard in the rematch.  The judges certainly got the decision right in the first Duran/Leonard fight, but Leonard was coming on really strong in the last 3 rounds of that fight.  The fight was as close as the scorecards indicated, and if he could have fought for a few more rounds, Leonard might have come out on top.  Of course,  both men knew the fight was only 15 rounds.  Leonard only has himself to blame for not taking the fight to Duran sooner ( and Duran has to be given a lot of credit for intimidating Leonard early in the fight) , but it's to clear to anyone who watched the fight that Duran won but Leonard proved he had would have a chance to beat Duran in the inevitable rematch. ).  However, given Duran a pass for losing the rematch because he was out of shape would be the equivalent of giving Peyton Manning a pass for losing the Super Bowl this coming Sunday because he spent all his time in NYC getting drunk in bars rather than studying his playbook.  The bottom line is that Duran/Leonard II should have been a great fight, but Duran robbed fight fans of this by not being in shape.  This will always be a black mark on his record, and it's a black mark against him in these rankings.

All that aside, it's not clear that Duran did enough in the 80's to be ranked ahead of Leonard.  He was 1-3 in the round-robin ( BTW, his 1-3 record doesn't include his loss in Duran/Leonard III.  I'm not counting that fight because Duran was 38 and was completey washed-up ) and was the only fighter not to score a knockout in the round-robin.  His lack of knockouts is why I've ranked Mr. "Hands of Stone" 4th in the "Power" category.  While there's no shame in not being able to knock out great fighters like Hagler/Hearns/Leonard, it is worth noting that Duran only had 2 knockouts in the 7 fights after fighting Leonard and before fighting Hagler.  He simply didn't have elite punching power as a Welterweight or Middleweight.  Leonard wasn't a power puncher either, but you've got to given him credit for his dramatic 14th round TKO on Hearns in their 1981 "Showdown".  Some may also also be surprised that I gave pretty-boy Leonard a better "Chin" rating than legendary tough guy Duran, but it can't be ignored that Leonard spent 26 rounds in the ring with "Hitman" Hearns without getting knocked out while Duran got knocked out cold by Hearns in the 2nd round of their fight.  The "No mas" moment also loses Duran a lot of points in the "heart" component of the "Chin" category.

Finally, it's instructive to look at Duran and Leonard's common opponents.  Leonard fared much better against Hearns than Duran, did slightly better than Duran against Hagler ( although despite what the scorecards said, Leornard certainly did not beat Hagler - more on that below ), and beat the great Wilfred Benitez while Duran lost to him.

The main reason this ranking was very close was that Duran was unquestionably better than Leonard when the fought each other at the height of their powers in their first fight.  I also have to given Duran some credit for being older and naturally smaller than Leonard.  However, Leornard had a far better career in the 80's, and "No mas" gives Leonard the #2 ranking in a razor-thin split decision.

1) Marvin Hagler

There is was never any doubt in my mind that Hagler would be #1 on this list.  His only loss in the round-robin was to Leonard, but he only lost that fight due to the remarkable coincidence that the only 2 people in the world who thought Leornard won that fight happened to be 2 of the 3 judges for the fight.

If you don't believe me, go watch the fight yourself.  Leonard had a brilliant fight plan ( get on his horse to stay away from Hagler's power for the first 2:30 or each round and then rally late in the last 30 seconds of the round to impress the judges and "steal" the round ) and employed all the fighting skills that gave him my #1 ranking in the "Skills" category.  He fought Hagler as well as anyone ever had, but I'll never believe that he won.  He spent most of the fight moving backwards, and he never even came close to hurting Hagler.  As I said at the beginning of this piece, boxing is essentially a brutal sport, and the primary goal of any boxer should be to hurt his opponent.  If a boxer can't manage to hurt his opponent in a fight, I can't give him the decision in that fight.  Hagler was the clear aggressor in his fight with Leonard, and did manage to hurt Leonard when Leonard wasn't running away from him.  No serious boxing fan really believes that Leonard won that fight

Perhaps I'm biased because by the time the Leonard/Hagler fight happened I was already convinced Hagler was the best pound-for-pound fighter I had ever seen ( However, my bias would have been tempered by the fact that I was a big fan of Leonard and I was rooting for Leonard to win the fight.  I wanted Leonard to win, but I never really believed he did ).  Hagler called himself "Marvelous Marvin Hagler", but "Marvelous" doesn't begin to describe the kind of fighter he was.  The man was an absolute bad-ass.  The man was practically indestructible.  I never saw him get seriously hurt in a fight, and I couldn't even conceive of him ever getting hurt in the ring.  Hearns hit him with shots that would have floored 95% of Heavyweights and Hagler just shook off all those shots and knocked Hearns out in the 3rd round.

In 1986 Hagler fought John "The Beast" Mugabi.  If you've never seen Mugabi fight, just picture a real-life Middleweight version of the Clubber Lang character from Rocky III.  Mugabi was 26-0 with 26 knockouts prior to his fight with Hagler.  He looked like an unstoppable knockout machine.  Hagler was in the tail end of his career while Mugabi was 6 years younger and in his prime.  If anybody was ever going to overpower Hagler, it would have been Mugabi.  They had a brutal fight  with Mugabi landing many crushing blows, but the Unstoppable Force eventually succumbed to the the Immovable Object when Hagler knocked out Mugabi in the 11th.

I could go on and on, but just watch the Hagler fights in the links above and you'll get the idea.  Despite what Mike Tyson used to claim, Marvin Hagler was truly "The baddest man on the planet".  Certainly not the biggest, and certainly not the strongest, but definitely the baddest.  Nobody remotely close to his weight class could have handled Hagler during his heyday in the 80's. You can have your Roy Jones Jr.s, your Floyd Mayweathers, your Julio Cesar Chavezes, and your Manny Pacquiaos.  The best pound-for-pound fighter I've ever seen is Marvin Hagler.

I'd Iike to dedicate this post to my grandfather.  He was the biggest boxing fan I've ever known, and he taught me how to throw a 3-punch combination ( "Jab, jab, [throws the right hand] bing!" ) when I was barely out of diapers.  We watched a lot of those 80s fights together.  I'm not sure he would have agreed with all my rankings, but I'm sure would have been happy to know that his grandson still cared enough about boxing to write this post.

Rich

P.S. This is off-topic, but considering the Super Bowl is in 2 days, I might as well make a prediction:

Seahawks 24
Broncos 19

( I see the Seahawks with a 24-13 lead late in the game.  The Broncos score a TD late, go for two and fail.  OK, that's an ultra-specific prediction, but I would be a bit surprised if the Broncos manage to win.  )

A Magic Christmas

This Christmas, Ruth and I ( and of course our kids ( Ruth's Dad came along too)  ) traveled to Las Vegas to meet up with her sister's family ( Debby, her husband Orion, and their 2-year old son Owen ).  Most of you are already aware of this due to my facebook posts ( on both my account and Ruth's account ), but I've decided to create a photo essay ( and send it out via email ) to share our experience with our relatives who don't spend a lot of time on facebook.

With a few exceptions, I won't post too many photos of the landmarks on The Strip ( you all know what they look like ).  Instead, I'll focus on what made this trip magical.

The photo above is one of the exceptions to the "no photos of landmarks" rule.  I took if from the balcony of our hotel suite ( on  34th floor ) on the first night of our visit ( Dec 22nd ).  It's blurry because I tool it with my iPhone ( I still can't figure out how to touch the screen to take a photo while keeping the phone steady ), but I was still really happy with the result.

Dec 23rd was the first full day of our stay.  We all woke up between 5 and 6 AM Vegas time  ( Our family and Ruth's Dad were still on east coast time and Debby's family has a 2-year-old ), and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel suite ( Ruth, Debby, and Orion had shopped for groceries the night before ) , before heading down to The Strip at about 9 AM.  We did some souvenir shopping to kill time while Ruth waited on line at a discount ticket booth ( more on that later ). While we were waiting/shopping, Owen saw a man dressed in woman's clothing.  I wasn't there to see his reaction, but I was told he said "That lady man is scary".

We did a quick visit of "New York, New York" ( We were at the MGM Signature Towers. The Signature is attached to the MGM Grand, which is across the street from "New York, New York". ), and eventually worked out way south down The Strip until we reached Mandalay Bay.  The main non-gambling attraction ( The only person who gambled on this trip was Ruth's Dad ) at Mandalay Bay is an aquarium.  It was quite impressive, but it didn't have a lot of stuff that I hadn't seem someplace else before.   However, the jellyfish tank may have been worth the price of admission.

There wasn't too much excitement during the day, but thanks to Ruth, we had plans for the evening.  Ruth had gotten discount tickets ( $51 dollars per ticket for mid-tier tickets ) to see the magician Jan Rouven at The Riviera.  If you find yourself in Vegas and want to see a magic show, I highly recommend that you go see Jan.  I'll admit that we haven't seen Angel's or Copperfield's show, but I can't imagine how their illusions could be any more impression than the ones Jan performed that night ( We did see Penn & Teller later in the trip.  They are incredible showmen and are worth every penny you might spend to see them, but they have nothing on Jan when it comes to magic. ).

One of the great things about Jan's show is you can get tremendous seats at a reasonable price ( from the discount ticket booths on the strip ), especially if you are willing to show up early.  With the exception of a few tables and booths in the first tier seating, there are no assigned seats, so if you get on line early, you'll get seated in the best seats in your tier.  We showed up at 5:45 for a 7 PM show and got seated in the middle of the first row in the 2nd tier of seats.  These seats were fantastic.  They were only about 25 feet from the stage, and because the 2nd tier of seats is on ground about 4 feet higher than the 1st tier of seats, there was not a chance that a tall person sitting in front of us could block the boy's view of the stage.  I'm sure we would have had to pay at least twice as much to get this close Angel or Copperfield.

The boys really enjoyed the show ( This might be a good time to mention that one of the reasons magic shows were on the agenda is that Peter loves magic.  He's been telling us for years that he wants to be a magician when he grows up. ), and after the show Jan did a picture/autograph session with everyone willing to wait their turn.  Here are the boys with Jan below:

The next day was the most amazing day of the trip.  We started with a trip to "Paris", and went to the top of the half-scale Eiffel Tower.  Ruth and I had done this before at night back in 1999, but the boys were eager to see the view from the top.  You definitely get a prettier view at night, but I think the boys still got a big kick out of the experience.

I didn't take the photos below until 2 days later, but this seems like the most appropriate spot in the photo essay to show them.  I'm sure you've seen plenty of photos of both the real and fake Eiffel Tower, but you probably have not seen too many photos of the Tower with a halo on the top.  As we walked across the street from the Tower on Dec 26th, I happened to notice that the Sun was directly behind the top of the Tower, and snapped the shots below.

Note that what you are seeing in the photos above isn't actually the Sun, but rather the bright sky around the sun ( the top of the Tower is blocking the Sun ).

After coming down from the Tower, we headed over The Bellagio with Ruth's Dad to meet Debby/Orion/Owen.  During the Christmas season, The Bellagio has a beautiful Christmas display in a large atrium.  I don't want to bore you with a bunch of photos, the shot below should give you a flavor of it.

After meeting in the Bellagio lobby, we headed over to the buffet to have a fantastic brunch ( There's one thing I noticed at the Vegas buffets last week which I had never seen at a buffet before.  They all seem to cut the crab legs in half length-wise.  Never before have I eaten that many crab legs with that little effort.  I'm hoping this becomes a trend at other buffets near my home, but if it does, I might soon weigh 300 pounds ( and about 130 of it will be crab meat. ) ).

After the buffet, we checked out the fake canals of "Venice" and eventually headed over to The Mirage.  After debating a bit, Ruth and I decided to take the kids to Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat.  Back when we visited Vegas back in 1999, Ruth and I thought the Secret Garden was one of the best parts of the trip.  I don't think we had ever seen dolphins that close-up before ( there was an underwater viewing area and the dolphins would swim up to the glass quite frequently ), and the tour came with an audio track in which Siegfried & Roy explained the history of all the large cats.  The ticket prices had doubled since 1999, but we figured it would still be worth the price if it was as good as it was back in 1999.  In short, it was nowhere near as good as 1999 ( no audio track, no way to view the dolphins underwater anymore, and only half as many large cats ), but we were really glad we decided to go.

After watching the dolphins for a while, Ruth started talking to one of the guides/trainers/keepers ( not sure what to call him - basically one of the people who was explaining the behaviors of the dolphins ) and asked him if trainers would be interacting with the dolphins soon.  He told us there would be some interaction in about 10 minutes.  Ruth and I seriously considered just waiting around for 10 minutes ( I was in favor of just waiting around, but thankfully Ruth convinced me otherwise ), but instead we decided to look at the big cats for a few minutes.  As we approached one corner of the "Secret Garden", Ruth grabbed my arm and said "Is that who I think it is?".  I couldn't believe my eyes at first either, but sure enough, it was Siegfried.  Sure, we got to hear an audio track of Siegfried back in 1999, but now the genuine article was just standing there a few feet from us.

As far as I could tell, Siegfried was not a part of the official tour.  There wasn't a line of people waiting to meet him, and I doubt very much he would want to spend his time taking photographs with tourists all day long ( and unless he is the worst investor of all time, he couldn't possibly need the money. ).  He was just standing there taking to one couple, and there was nobody else gathered around him.  I don't know why he was there, but I can only guess that now that his career is over and the bright lights have dimmed, he probably enjoys meeting his fans for a few minutes every once in a while ( We checked again about 30 minutes later, and he was nowhere to be found in the Secret Garden. ).  Making a few fans smile probably brightens his day as much as it makes the day of his fans.

In any case, after he was done talking to the other couple we walked over and introduced ourselves and the boys.  One of the first things has asked me after the introductions was "Are you German?".  I guess German folks are really tight.  Jan Rouven is German and he knows Siegfried & Roy well enough that they gave him one of their tricks, along with the original equipment ( Jan mentioned this during his show, and Siegfried confirmed this when we talked to him. ).

After Ruth took the picture below ...

... I told Siegfried that Peter wants to be a magician when he grows up.  Siegfried then talked to Peter a bit more and did the following ...



This is the "magic coin" Siegfried used in the trick ( and gave to Peter afterwards ).

After that, we headed back to our hotel suite for a while, where we learned that Ruth's Dad had hit a $1400 jackpot earlier in the day.  After the boys got their dose of video games, and we posted Siegfried stuff to facebook, we headed out to watch Penn & Teller.

Before heading over to The Rio to watch the show, we stopped at The Bellagio to watch the fountains.

I think the ideal place to watch the fountains is from the sidewalk adjacent to the street ( and facing The Bellagio ).  We didn't get there early enough to get one of those prime viewing spots, but it was kinda nice to watch the fountains with the fake Eiffel Tower in the background.

It took a while to weave through the crowd after the fountain show, but eventually we got ourselves to The Rio, where we had dinner prior to the show.  We were all hoping the Penn & Teller show would be the highlight of our trip ( Ruth and I had seen a Penn & Teller show on Long Island about 20 years earlier ).  We had wanted to see at least one magic show while we we in Vegas and we had bought the Penn & Teller tickets almost immediately after we had arranged for the plane trip and the hotel.  When looking over the available seats online, we had noticed a block of 4 seats that were right next to the aisle in the 2nd and 3rd rows ( 2 seats in the 2nd row, and 2 right behind them in the 3rd row, with an aisle directly to the right of the seats.  All the other available seats were at least 20 rows from the stage. ).  We snagged the seats immediately, knowing that we might never have a chance to be this close to the stage in a magic show again.

We settled into our seats ( with Michael and Peter sitting in front of us ), and got ready to enjoy the show.  The show was everything we expected and more, with the "more" happening about halfway through the show.

Penn & Teller have a few acts which require a volunteer from the audience, and as Penn started to introduce and an act based on TSA security, Teller walked into the aisle next to us and offered his hand to Michael.  The next thing you you know Michael was up on stage while Ruth giggled and said stuff like "Oh my Goodness!".

It would be wrong to say the Michael stole the show, but he certainly enhanced everyone's experience that night.  The simplest way I can put it is that Michael was being Michael, except that we was doing it in front of 1500 people.  Michael is one of the least self-conscious kids you're ever going to meet ( Just the opposite of Peter.  Peter was actually sitting in the aisle seat, but Teller choose Michael instead of Peter because Peter probably looked terrified while Michael almost certainly looked eager to go on stage. ).

As soon as Michael got up there he started fidgeting as he's prone to do ( Thanks goodness he didn't stick his finger in his nose or his hand in his pants! ).  He looked around with his eyes as big as saucers and was making all sorts of crazy facial expressions as Penn spoke.  Michael was wearing a hooded sweat-jacket, which  he took off soon after arriving on stage.  While he was fidgeting and looking around ( and audience was giggling at each little fidget ) he put the sweat-jacket back on inside-out.  The audience reacted with hearty laughter when Michael did this and then exploded with laughter when Penn responded by taking off his suit jacket and putting it back on inside-out.

Soon after that Penn handed Michael a TSA wand ( one of the hand-held metal detectors that TSA uses at airports ).  He asked Michael to swipe the wand over his suit jacket, and when it beeped he pull a credit-card sized piece of metal out of the inside pocket of his jacket ( which was actually on the outside at that point ).  Penn explained it was a metal version of the Bill of Rights.  He told the audience that he always has a metal Bill of Rights with him when he goes through airport security and that when it sets off the metal detectors he pulls it out and shows the TSA agent the 4th Amendment ( The 4th Amendment prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures".  In case you were not aware, Penn & Teller are big time Libertarians, and after magic, Libertarianism was the biggest theme of the show ( there was also an act with a flag-burning theme )).

While Penn was talking about the TSA and the 4th amendment and Teller was pulling huge items out of his jacket ( First a big metal dish with something on fire on top of it, then a huge fire extinguisher, and finally a large shovel.  He eventually made a women appear out of thin air underneath a walk-through metal detector.  BTW, Michael told us he couldn't tell how Teller managed to do all this, even though he probably had a better angle than anyone. ), Michael kept fidgeting and waving the metal detector.  He kept waving it over metal things ( like the zipper on his jacket and metal Bill of Rights Penn gave him ) to make it beep, so much so that you could hear several obtrusive beeps during Penn's speech.  Michael swung the wand like a baseball bat once, and at one point started waving it over his own private parts ( Penn: "That's not made of metal Michael, and you should be glad that it isn't." ).

After the show, Penn & Teller each signed the metal Bill of Rights they used in the act with Michael.

They also took pictures ...

... and signed autographs.



Yes, you heard that right - we got to hear Teller speak!  In the video above, he was signing a photo of Penn & Teller and drew and arrow pointing to himself to help the boys remember which one he was.

Penn & Teller signed autographs and and took pictures with anyone who was willing to wait after the show.  When Teller signed the Bill or Right for me, he told me, "I didn't write it, but I wish that I had."  When we spoke with Penn he told us, "I still don't understand what was going on with the sweat-jacket." ( Unfortunately, we don't have that on video. ).

After that night, the rest of our vacation was gravy.  We enjoyed the next 2 days ( plus Friday morning ), but there really isn't anything else exciting to report.

Considering the boys were there with their cousin Owen, and Owen had both sunglasses and a baby doll, we attempted to replicate the poster from "The Hangover".

We made little sunglasses for the baby doll and put my glasses on Michael ( I regret that I didn't give him a towel to hold - I'm getting so blind that even with my reading glasses on, I didn't notice the towel when I looked at the photo of the poster on my phone ).  I would have liked for them to be closer together ( and for Owen to stand while the boys kneeled ), but it is never easy to get a 2-year-old to pose the way you want ( and I didn't want to be an overbearing "director" of the photo ), so the photo below was the best we could do.

In any case, Ruth says she'll be doing some Photoshop post-production in order to improve it.

The Hangover shot was appropriate, because it really is like a buddy movie with those three.  Owen loves having his older cousins around.  When we visited Debby's family in California in August, Owen followed the boys around for the entire vacation.  He wanted to do whatever they were doing.  At one point, he insisted on having the hood of his sweatshirt over his head because the boys were walking around with their hoods on.  Owen was fighting Debby and Orion when they tried to brush his teeth until we sent Michael into the bathroom to brush in front of Owen.  After that, Owen was happy to have his teeth brushed.  After we left California, Owen kept asking "Where Michael go?  Where Peter go?".  So, Owen was very happy to see his cousins when we met in the hotel lobby to check into the hotel.  Unfortunately, he got upset any time he was separated from them, so there were times when our family and Debby's family were forced to stay together, even when we each felt like doing our own thing.  Still, I've got no complaints, because it was so sweet to see how happy they were together.

We left Vegas at 2:45 PM on Friday Dec 27th, and drove back home from Philly ( There were better flight options in Philly than at Newark, so it made sense to drive to Philly for our flight. ).  We landed at about 10:15 PM local time, but due to a series of mishaps ( flat tire on the mobile walkway that was supposed to get us from the plane to the terminal; luggage was on a completely different carousel than the one linked to our flight number on all the video screens; there were signs leading to every parking garage except the one we were parked in; the parking garage couldn't read my ticket ) we didn't get home until 1 AM on Saturday.  Thus, our Christmas morning took place at 1:30 AM on December 28th.

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Rich

The Stadium Scam

I know I'm not the first person the write about this, but I might just be the most pissed off.  Yesterday, it was announced that the Atlanta Braves were going to leave Turner Field and start playing in a new publicly financed stadium starting in 2017.

Turner Field opened in 1997.

I have plenty of T-shirts older than Turner Field.
I have at least a few pairs of socks older than Turner Field.
Hell, I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but I bet I even have some underwear older than Turner Field.

Turner Field was a perfectly good stadium.  I don't really blame the Braves for taking the public financing ( $300 million ) to build a new ballpark, but I'm disgusted by the politicians in Cobb County Georgia who decided that spending $300 million to help billionaires build a stadium would be a good use of public money.  Cobb County is a Republican stronghold ( Cobb County gave a higher percentage of their votes to Romney than the rest of Georgia ), and during these times when Republicans are trying to cut food stamps, it is disheartening to know that almost half the country supports a political party that promotes this kind of corporate welfare.

Now, Cobb County is a relatively affluent suburban county of almost 700,000 people.  Perhaps $300 million for a stadium is a luxury they can afford.  Perhaps they are awash in cash and and have no other productive way to spend all their money.

Perhaps not.

As you can see from the link above, the Cobb County school system is experiencing budgets cuts and is laying off teachers.

Let me repeat that again: Cobb County decided to spend $300 million dollars on a baseball stadium while they lay off teachers.  Of course they're laying off teachers.  If there's one thing every Republican politician knows ( I'm looking at you Chris Christie! ), it's that there isn't a budget problem that can't be solved by giving more money to rich people while laying off greedy teachers.

As bad as this looks, it's worse than it looks.

The reason the Braves ( and every other professional sports team ) want a new stadium can be summed up in two words: Luxury Boxes

The Braves want to build a stadium with plenty of luxury boxes.  They want to charge ridiculously high prices to use these boxes, prices that no sane person would pay, unless ...

- the "person" is a corporation ( "Corporations are people, my friend." ).

- the "person" can write off the cost of the luxury box as a business expense.

So, not only is corporate welfare being used to finance this stadium, the stadium itself will be a corporate welfare machine that will use public money ( in the form of tax breaks ) to subsidize the price of tickets for the wealthy.

All of this is nothing new, but this Braves stadium deal is more egregious than most, and it's getting a lot more attention than these stories usually do.  Part of me hopes that this will be somewhat of an emperor-has-no-clothes momenr for the publicly-financed stadium movement.  I'm hoping that some people will finally realize that it is not a good idea to re-elect the politicians who make these kind of deals.

Of course, I'm probably giving voters too much credit, but if we can find some politicians who can make effective arguments against corporate welfare, perhaps we can make some progress as a society.

Anyway, I not even sure what to say anymore.  The only thing in my head right now is ...

Warren 2016!

Seriously, Warren 2016!

Rich

October Pet Peeves

A few randoms thoughts this Halloween ....

I love "The Walking Dead", but something about it bothered me recently.  I came to the realization that very few people wear glasses in the world of "The Walking Dead".  When I say "very few", I don't mean very few relative to the real world, I mean very few relative to the world of the Zombie Apocalypse.  In the real world, the percentage of people who wear glasses is much lower than the percentage of people with impaired vision, because lots of people wear contacts lenses.  However, in the world of the Zombie Apocalypse, contacts lenses would be hard to come by.  Most people who wear contacts lenses have at most a year's supply of disposable lenses in their home.  So, even if you had the wherewithal to gather up all your contacts lenses and cleaning fluid as you fled from the zombies, your supply wouldn't last much longer than year.  Eventually, you would have to switch to your glasses, assuming you had a pair and were lucky enough to survive the Apocalypse without this happening.

"The Walking Dead" is in its 4th season, and judging by the number of glasses you see, it's doesn't seem like the contact lens wearers have switch to their glasses.  How have these supplies of contacts lasted more than 3 years?  How come we don't find people staggering around half-blind because their contacts ran out and they don't have a pair of glasses handy?  Do all the people in the Zombie Apocalypse have 20/20 vision?  What's up with that?

Dead people getting up and walking around, however?

I'm down with that.

My other October pet peeve is a baseball pet peeve that I was reminded of during game 3 of the World Series ( see my tweets from October 27th ).

I was planning to write more, but work just called me and it's 10:10 on the last day of the month.  I'm going to need to post this now to get my October post up in time.

Rich