Short rest

I have to say, I totally don't get Joe Girardi's thinking as far as it applies to starting CC Sabathia this afternoon in LA. Why are you pitching your ace on shorter rest than he has worked during the entire season, in a series where you have a game in hand. Why not pitch him on his normal cycle in game 5, where at worst he will be trying to win your third game in the series. Is he trying to make sure the Yankees don't have to play another game in this series in Yankee stadium, where the Angels really didn't play very well? I just don't get it.

Our wonderful future

...is not here yet.

This is a story from last Wednesday's Toronto Star. It is the story of First Light, a gigantic solar farm in Napanee Ontario. The installation spans 36 hectares and includes 126,040 solar panels. Here is the problem: this enormous solar farm generates...9 megawatts. The reason this is a problem is because First Light is big. It is really big. How big? 36 hectares big. For my Toronto readers, you could build 9 Rogers Centres inside it. And this 36 hectares can generate enough power for 1000 homes. Now 1000 homes is nice, it's surely not nothing. But compared to the province of Ontario, it is nothing. Power plants generate thousands of megawatts, First Light generates 9. And the problem with solar energy at the moment is that there is no economy of scale. You build a farm with 300,000 panels, you get about 27 megawatts. And it goes without saying that this land can't be used for anything else. Fortunately, Ontario at least has passed regulations that will stop construction of these farms on land that is more suitable for actual farming. But the point remains, in terms of return on investment, solar is just not practical yet. And government should not be in the business of plunging forward with, nor mandating, technology which would not be embraced by the market as it stands now. Alternative energy is not yet in a position to be an effective substitute for traditional energy. These projects only serve to convey to the public the idea that it is, which will only harm the movement in the end.

None of the above is to say that First Light is not itself a wonderful feat of engineering. In fact it is a commendable one. I'm unaware of whether the installation can be upgraded with more advanced panels in the future. If it can be, that would temper my disappointment with the final product.

Even Better Than the Real Thing

If you were following my Twitter yesterday, you know that I had some thoughts about the setlists for the 2 U2 shows which took place at the Rogers Centre this week (9/16 and 9/17). Basically, I said that if I had been at either show (I wasn't), those setlists would have been a major letdown for me. Now there's something I have to say up front, before I get into a lot of detail here. If you have the chance to go to a U2 concert, go. Period. There is no way that concert will not be one of the top five shows you see in your lifetime. No matter what songs they play, the experience is that good. I was lucky (and I mean that, anyone who gets into these shows is lucky, fifty thousand more people want to go than there are tickets) to be at the September 16 2005 show of the Vertigo Tour (setlist here), and if it's not the greatest concert I've ever been to then it's number two. So what I'm about to talk about is, as I told a friend yesterday about something unrelated, a marginal problem. It is the difference between great and outstanding, it is the last half star in a four star review.

There was a lot of controversy this week because U2 chose not to play Pride, their signature song, at either of their Toronto shows. Now, I understand that playing the same song, more or less the same way, for twenty years can get boring. I've never accepted that reason though. First of all, tickets for these shows were not cheap. I think prices ran from about $60 to $230. For that money, I think the fans deserve to hear what they expect to hear, and when you go to a U2 concert, there are just certain songs you feel entirely justified in expecting to hear. Pride (in the Name of Love) has to be at the top of that list. At this point I'll invoke Mark Knopfler, who I once read in an interview say that he feels he owes playing his hits to the fans, because however he might feel about playing them personally, he knows that those songs were and are important to his fans in their own lives. Now that I've gotten all of that out of the way, here's my real reason for this post: my personal setlist of U2 favourites.

City of Blinding Lights
Magnificent
Kite
Two Hearts Beat as One
I Will Follow
Wire
Bad
Miracle Drug
Love or Peace or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Beautiful Day
In God's Country
All I Want is You
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
Bullet the Blue Sky
Pride
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for
Running to Stand Still

encore
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Unknown Caller
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Walk on

second encore
One Tree Hill
Fourty

Listen carefully

When you're being given statistics, it's always important to consider certain things. Consider the source. This one is obvious. Why is someone giving you this information, what is their goal, what are they trying to convince you of. We all use information to help make our case, I do it as much as anyone. We use what we think will make our case appear strongest, and we often neglect to include things which might weaken our case or distract from it. Something else to consider about information is what you are being given. Make sure you are aware of what you have been told and try to figure out what context you should put it in.

Today, President Obama was speaking at the University of Maryland. At one point in his speech, he mentioned that in America, "up to 98,000 people die every year from medical errors." Now simply reading that, you should notice something immediately; saying "up to" a number clearly does not mean the same thing as saying that number. What was the number last year? The year before that? The next thing you should think about is how broad the term "medical errors" is. What does it mean? What is included in it? Are these errors which occur during surgeries? Errors which happen at any point during someone's stay at a hospital? Suppose the number only applies to problems which occur during surgeries, and that 100,000,000 surgeries are performed each year. That would mean the rate of incidents causing death during surgery is less than 0.1%. This is the difference between being given real numbers and being given nominal numbers. Nominal numbers are figures, real numbers give you a greater sense for the whole.

My reason for posting about this is pretty clear, I really resented the President throwing around an arbitrary number completely without providing context for it. But it can also serve as a lesson for dealing with the constant stream of information we're assaulted with on a daily basis.

This analysis by Fouad Ajami in today's WSJ perfectly pinpoints my basic problem with President Obama's personal and governing philosophy. The contrast with Reagan is notably damning.

The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan's view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan. It was stirring that the man who headed into the sunset of his life would bid his country farewell by reminding it that its best days were yet to come.

In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the "Yes we can!" mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path.

Thus the moment of crisis would become an opportunity to push through a political economy of redistribution and a foreign policy of American penance. The independent voters were the first to break ranks. They hadn't underwritten this fundamental change in the American polity when they cast their votes for Mr. Obama.

American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

Equality is not morality

If you were to ask me what the critical point in the discussion of healthcare is for me, the point the entire debate pivots on, I would tell you it is the conflict between the government and the market. And to those who would respond by saying there is not an inherent conflict between the two, that idea is nonsense. The market is voluntary, the government is coercive. The government is arbitrary, the market is personal. In the market, decisions are made by people. For the government, decisions are made through systems. Equally nonsensical is the notion that this is not a discussion of whether the government should be the arbiter of the AMerican healthcare system; the degree of the government's involvement in the system is always the point at issue.

Leaving aside the economic implications of bureaucratic rationing, namely the fact that in such systems the quality of the rationed goods tends to stagnate along with availibility, we are told that the key issue is the fairness of the system. Very well, I shall explore that. The thing big government types like about systems is that they are impersonal. It's all risk factors and shortages and numbers. "Sorry, but someone else needs that procedure more than you do right now. I'm sure it'll be your turn soon." But is that really more fair than not being able to afford the procedure? I say no. I would even go so far as to say that it is a great deal worse. If you design a formula which has the express purpose of determining who should be eligible for certain procedures, you are knowingly denying those procedures to those deemed to be ineligible. The difference between that system and a system which is governed by the principles of the free market is profound. There is nothing moral about a system which is designed to deny care to some in favour of others it views as more 'deserving.'

The Sultan of Swing

Today is Mark Knopfler's birthday. More than my favourite guitarist, he is my favourite musician. There is no music I listen to more often than his. He is the reason I began playing guitar, and he is the reason that first guitar was a Fender Stratocaster. He is the reason whatever songs I might play with a pick are the exception and not the rule. He has inspired my technique, my style, and my sound. Roc, blues, pop, country, folk; he has played them all, and brilliantly so. And all of the above praise are simply for him as a guitar player. As a songwriter, he has penned lyrics which envoke astounding emotion, depth, passion, and humanity. As well, Knopfler has composed not only all of his pop music, but many film scores, all of which reflect the classical beauty that is so distinctly his own. Happy birthday Mark!

The story they don't want you to know

I guess we're supposed to celebrate or something; Harvey Milk is being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom today, posthumously of course. Except I'm not celebrating, not for a second. That's because I know about Harvey Milk, the way most people don't. I know the truth: harvey Milk was a despicable person, and if he weren't gay his name would be an epithet. He was a liar, a libeler, a bully, and a cynical politician to the core. That's the Harvey Milk Hollywood didn't want you to see.

Milk claimed that he was dishonourably discharged from the Navy because he was gay. He lied. After serving 4 years, he was honourable discharged; no one knew he was gay.
In a letter to President Carter, Milk libeled the parents of John Stoen, the 6 year old Guyanese boy kidnapped by Jim Jones. I'll return to Milk's sorted history with Jones in a moment.
Milk cynically outed Bill Sipple in 1975 to further his own political agenda.
Milk publically labeled anyone opposed to his agenda as Nazis, and tarred fellow gays opposed to his own views as collaborators.
Milk arranged for his own camera store to be vandalized, an attack which he then blamed on a public nemesis.

As previously mentioned, Harvey Milk Aided and Abetted one of the most notorious mass murderers in American history, the 'Reverend' Jim Jones. He did so not just in the matter of the latter's kidnapping of John Stoen, but in others. In exchange for Jones providing him campaign volunteers, Milk defended Jones as well as the presence of his Peoples Temple in the press and at City Hall. A week before his own murder, Jones and more than 900 of his followers were dead.

Finally, the idea that Milk was killed because he was gay is an absurd myth that persists to this day. When the 2 were killed on November 27 1978, by a supporter of gay rights, no more did Milk's sexuality play a part in his murder than did the fact that George Moscone was straight play a role in his. To their credit, at least the writers of the movie were relatively fair in dealing with this point.

So now you know the real Harvey Milk. And because you now know the man President Obama thinks is worthy of the Medal of Freedom, you now know a little more about him too.

The Abyss...

Reading the transcript of last night's press conference this morning, I can only describe my reaction as dispirited disdain. So much so that it is truly difficult to find a place at which to begin. So much was on display last night: the dishonesty, the outright lies, the attempted vilifying of good and decent Americans, the obfuscations, the shameful narcissism of it all. But I've got to start somewhere, so...

Any discussion of last night, and therefore of the current health care debate in general, must begin with the big lie; that nearly 50,000,000 Americans live in financial peril for lack of health insurance. As I have stated previously, this number is not only inaccurate, but has been constructed dishonestly in order to create a compelling talking point. In my view a fair yet liberal reading of the data involved would present a number perhaps as high as 18,000,000. The second dishonest number commonly used in the health care discussion is that 'more than 5 of every 7 bankruptcies are due to health care costs.' This is technically true, but again uses a dishonest number in order to make the problem appear bigger than it is. According to the latest data on the subject, the actual number of health care related bankruptcies in America is somewhat less than 550,000 per year. While each one of these cases is tragic, when combined they represent a number which is statistically insignificant, and their occasional occurrence does not necessitate the full-scale reconfiguration of the U.S. health care system.

The most egregious statements last night though had to be the President's repeated and insistent promise not to sign a health care bill which will increase America's deficit. Really, this is such utter nonsense. The Congressional Budget Office has recently revealed projections which will see the bills currently before congress add hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit within 10 years. And that's assuming that the cost projections for the program hold, which they never do. Simply put, there is no way to forecast the size of this program, including how many individuals it will eventually cover.

Next, there is the President's claim that those who want to keep their current private insurance plans will be able to do so for as long as they like. This is simply not true. In fact, that this is not true is so central to the very concept of the proposed legislation that it is made clear within the first 20 pages of the House bill, the America's Affordable Health Choices Act. Health care plans purchased through an employer must be converted into plans which meet the same restrictions found in the governbment's 'managed care' plans within 5 years. Those who purchase their plans individually will have their plans converted even sooner. These are the facts on the table, and for the President to state definitively that they are not is at best cynical. Of course no public appearance by this President would be complete without more uses of the words "I" and "me" than you can count, and last night was no different. He even made sure to mention that some Republicans were playing politics with health care. I guess in his world that's more offensive than say, playing politics with...the Iraq War. And Heaven knows we never heard any Democrats talk about wanting to defeat President Bush on who knows how many issues for the last 8 years. But back to the matter at hand.

The President's assertion that increased government influence in the health care sector will produce lower costs and more choice in coverage is absurd on its face. Government involvement always results in less competition and less value for each dollar. Using Medicare as a template for being able to lower costs is a terrible example. The government is able to charge below cost for treatment under Medicare - we'll ignore the mind-blowing levels of fraud in the system for now - because providers simply pass on the difference to paying customers. That difference, along with cost inflation due to runaway legal fees and being forced to cover the treatment of people outside the system (illegal aliens) are the causes of spiraling medical costs in AMerica. As of now, the proposed legislation addresses none of these problems.

Lastly, by far the most disgusting moment of the night was the President's despicable slandering of doctors. He stated categorically that doctors routinely knowingly order unnecessary (and dangerous) tests for their patients specifically to collect on Medicare billings. I believe he made these statements entirely without cause, as so far the White House has failed to provide any basis for them this morning. For the President of the United States to question the integrity of a group of Americans as he did last night is beyond the pale. This, combined with his shameful rhetoric regarding the Cambridge, Massachusetts police officers, made sure that whatever respect I may have ever had for this man is now a distant memory.

Deflating news

On Friday morning we learned that the Canadian economy operated at an inflation rate in the second quarter of -0.3%. That's a roundabout way of saying that the Canadian economy is now officially experiencing deflation.

Deflation is one of those things which sounds nice - like universal health care, or the Employee Free Choice Act - but really isn't a good thing. The basic idea sounds harmless enough, even good; things are cheaper to buy. But in fact this is a bad thing, so bad that I along with many others would tell you that 1% inflation is vastly preferable to deflation as low as .5%. There are a few reasons for this.

First and most importantly to the current Canadian economy, sustained deflation lowers output. Because reducing wages in the short-term can be difficult, businesses simply reduce their workforce in order to get to the lower output level. The second danger of deflation is liquidity traps. Basically, a liquidity trap is a situation in which lenders will not lend to borrowers because they are discouraged from doing so by the low rate of return they will receive. The last point, which is somewhat connected to the second, is that deflation hammers debters. We can explain this through the idea that deflation represents lower prices. The corollary of that idea is obviously that a dollar holds greater value than it did before the deflation. This is a good thing, just not if you're in debt. That's because debt is not owed in real value, but rather in nominal value. You borrowed $10,000, you owe $10,000 (plus interest). So if you are holding debt, after deflation you're debt is now even more expensive than it was before.

So as you can see, the number of people for whom this news of deflation will turn out to be a good thing is really quite small. It's pretty much limited to retired individuals on fixed incomes who have literally paid off their debts to 0.

Ain't over till it's over

I still don't think I believe it. The Pittsburgh Penguins just completed what might be the most incredible post-season run in the history of pro sports. This team was dead and buried twice in the same series, a series they somehow won. The Penguins were dead after losing the first 2 games in Detroit, because teams just don't come back from down 2-0, and even if they did it wasn't going to happen against this Red Wings team. And they were dead after losing game 5 5-0, because how could a team possibly have anything left after a loss like that, and even if they somehow managed to win game 6 at home, there was no way in hell they could win game 7 in Detroit. And it wasn't just that they were playing a Detroit team which barely lost the President's Trophy to the long since eliminated Sharks, these were the defending Stanley Cup champs. In the end, in game 7 it wasn't the home team, the team full of champions who had all the experience in the world who were cool, calm, and collected, it was the visiters. It was the visiters who played a game free of mistakes and full of poise and defensive intensity. So a team beat the defending champions, in game 7, on the other team's home ice...as I said I still don't think I believe it.

And that was just the finals! I haven't even mentioned the Washington series. a series which will go down in history as one of the best ever. A series Pittsburgh lead 3-2 before losing at home, forcing the Penguins to win a game 7 against the Capitals in Washington, their first (but not last) unexpected road game 7 victory.

This was a Penguins team which was a disaster in February. They sat 10th in the Eastern Conference when they fired the coach who had taken them to the finals last year. If you believe that coaching matters in pro sports, then Dan Bylsma just pulled off the coaching job of the decade.

There is so much more to this story. There is Marc-Andre Fleury, who's game 5 performance last year ranks as one of the greatest ever, and just had a week which truly defies description. Or Hal Gill, Brooks Orpik, and Rob Scuderi, 3 American defencemen you've probably never heard of, who shut down the best offense in the NHL in games 6 and 7. Or the tale of Marian Hossa, who came close with the Penguins last year and then decided to sign with Detroit in the off-season, and in what can only be seen as an act of sports justice was denied a championship again as the team he left defeated the team he joined in a rematch. But those stories are for later. Tonight is about the extraordinary and the unexpected. Tonight is about reminding us that anything is possible if they'll let us play just one more game.

So congratulations to the 2008 Pittsburgh Penguins. After tonight you are not only champions, you are legends. As Mike Emrick would say, "Stanley Cup champions, no practice tomorrow!"

You too could be an appeals court judge!

That's the feeling I'm left with after reading, and re-reading, and re-reading again, this decision by the Seventh Circuit which rules that states and local governments can pass laws violating the Second Amendment. The question here is pretty simple: if the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) isn't the supreme law of the land, then what is it? If all 50 states can pass laws in conflict with the Second Amendment (or the first or the fifth or the thirteenth for that matter), the document has become meaningless. This is, to paraphrase a common expression, a conclusion so logically flawed and silly that only judges could have reasoned their way to it.

Blerg!

I guess it's once again time to rant about something I hate, and hate increasingly, about the internet. That is this ever expanding practice of bloggers forcing their readers to click to a separate page to read a post. I hate it, everyone I know hates it, and yet farther down the rabbit hole we go. Here are the two Engadget posts which set me off yesterday, posted within less than 3 hours of each other. The portion of the first post seen on the main page is less than 400 characters, the second barely more than 500 before you hit the click through. This is totally stupid and unacceptable. Anyone--and I'm talking about sighted people here--who has spent more than 12 seconds on the internet knows how to quickly skip through posts they're not interested in reading. So who is this supposed to help? I have no problem with leaving pictures on a separate page, those take time to download. But There is no excuse for forcing people to do a click and return to just read text.

Now, some are better than others at this. The blog which prompted my first rant about this last year was the TV blog of the New York Post. Engadget used to be fairly good at not doing click throughs, they've recently become one of the worst. Gizmodo is beyond hope in this regard and has been for years, its main page resembles nothing so much as a Twitter feed. But all of the above offenders are rank amatures compared to Alan Sepinwall, who on his main page taunts his readers with cleverly relevant one-liners in place of his actual posts!

But as I've said, the die is cast. The above are now seemingly the rule rather than the exception. Sometimes you just feel better after complaining about something, even though you know it's not going to change.

A note about Terminator

I usually stay away from doing movie reviews, the reason should be pretty obvious. But I do have some thoughts which are related to, though not necessarily about, Terminator Salvation, which I just saw. The bottom line first: I think the movie is better, scratch that, much better than you've heard it is. I'd give it about a 7.8. I'll definitely go see the next one if they make it.

My first reaction on just having read some of the reviews again is, "Hmm, these people remember the first two movies a lot differently than I do." I don't view this movie as some sort of egregious affront to the 'Terminator legacy,' whatever that is supposed to be. I've seen Christian Bale's characterization of John Conner disparaged as 'someone who's been told how important he is and has started to believe it.' Duh! If that wasn't what Bale was going for at least he got there by accident. For me it felt true to the character.

Moving on, I'm most surprised by the criticism of one particular element of the ending as 'unoriginal.' Folks, it's a Terminator movie. There are signposts which must appear. That is part of what makes it fun, for me at least. Now, is the ending itself cliched? totally. Predictable? very, especially if you have actually been paying attention to what certain characters have been saying during the darn movie! It's something that can be seen coming a mile away in fact, which really doesn't bother me. What is true is that the way the ending plays now, well, to say that it stretches credibility is an understatement. I guess the difference is knowing the above doesn't kill the rest of the movie for me. If it did for you, then I'm not sure you were expecting the same movie I was. I enjoyed it.

For all debts public and private

I suppose it's time for me to finally weigh in on the mess currently unfolding (unraveling?) in Phoenix.

It's hard to know where to even begin. For years, it has been rather an open secret in NHL circles that there are a significant number of teams (6 to my count) which find themselves in a catastrophic financial position. These are teams which are not only not profitable, but in some cases teams which are losing many millions of dollars each year. These teams, in no particular order, are: Atlanta, Florida, Tampa Bay, Nashville, Phoenix, and the New York Islanders. It is important to note that for more than six months, it has been the unequivocal position of the commissioner and those in his office that the NHL and all of its teams stand on good financial footing. Comprehensively researched reports in the press have been officially denied, and their authors publically attacked by league officials as having an axe to grind against the administration. Well reckoning has arrived. A court in Phoenix is about to demand full disclosure of the league and its finances as applies to the Phoenix Coyotes.

There are three issues at play in this case: who currently owns/controls/maintains the right to declare the team bankrupt, who is allowed to petition for ownership, and what, exactly, are they buying. In terms of ownership, the NHL is claiming that Jerry Moyes, who is listed as the official owner of the team, turned over control of the team to the NHL itself at some point during 2008. This circumstance is apparently similar to the one which found Major League Baseball essentially owning and running the Montreal Expos until they were moved to Washington and became the Nationals under new ownership. Mr. Moyes is reportedly the team's largest creditor, having personally invested more than $80 million in order to keep the team operating over the last several years. Putting aside the fact that he is the largest creditor, isn't the most fundamental right of a business owner the right to sell that business, or to attempt to recover their debts? turns out, not necessarily. People who sign franchise agreements waive all sorts of rights related to owning and operating their business. Assuming the franchise agreement between Phoenix and the NHL becomes part of the court record, it'll be interesting to finally get a look at one of these. And it'll be interesting to see if an agreement like this one is even found to be binding. Sometimes the government doesn't let you waive certain rights, and contracts which claim to do so are helf to be invalid. Finally, in terms of the ownership/control question, there's a reason why I mentioned the league's previous statements on this matter earlier. Surely you're thinking at this point that this is ridiculous, that the NHL can't claim for half a year that everything is fine while it is secretly paying the bills for one of its teams. Unfortunately they can. Neither the NHL, nor any of its individual teams, is a public entity. A private business can say whatever it wants through the media, it is not held to the same standards as a public corporation. So sadly, the despicable conduct of the league office will likely not be held against it in court.

An obvious question to ask at this point is, why couldn't Moyes simply announce that he was selling his ownership to Jim Balsillie? the answer appears to be that such an action would indeed violate the franchise agreement. So the bankruptcy filing was necessary in order to declare that or any other part of the agreement invalid. But filing bankruptcy also opens up the process to anyone else who might want to buy the team. That's all well and good, but who wants to own a team which can not be moved out of a location which results in an anual loss of tens of millions of dollars? This is why the questions of who will be allowed to make an offer for the team, assuming the process gets that far, and what the rights of the new owner will be, are closely related. It is impossible to imagine anyone stepping forward with an offer which is financially comparable to Balsillie's proposal, unless that individual is in fact a front for the present NHL owners, who will continue to operate the team and sustain its losses. This of course is the point: no one is likely to step forward with a desirable offer under the conditions imposed by the NHL, therefore, in order for the bankruptcy process to provide for the creditors, the court must rule those conditions invalid.

Regardless of what happens in Phoenix, either today or weeks from now, the charade of a financially healthy NHL is ended. This league plays too many games in cities which simply lack enough hockey fans to properly support a team. Expansion has not strengthened the league, it has weakened it. Hopefully a bankruptcy court judge is about to force the NHL to take the first step in fixing this problem.