Northbound

You know, it’s weird, I ought to spend more time making fun of Deepak Chopra, but I never get around to it.  I guess today’s the day:

What if God was a two-year-old toddler and you were his mother? You’d spend your day keeping close watch and only find calm when your child was taking a nap. But God isn’t two years old, and he /she doesn’t need taking care of. I wish religious people took the analogy seriously, because they are constantly rushing in to protect God, screaming in outrage when he /she is surely laughing. God may very well see the universe as a divine comedy. Every exploding nova could be an explosion of laughter. Nobody knows.

Yeah, real smart, there, Deepak.  Let’s say you’re sitting around one day, drinking a Dr Pepper, watching Baseball Tonight and minding your own business, when BOOM!  Your whole entire star blows up, taking you and the entire planet with it.  So there you are, dead, vaporized, along with your whole entire culture, and Deepak Chopra is out there explaining to people that it’s just how God laughs.  How does that make you feel, knowing that Deepak Chopra thinks that the destruction of your whole civilization is just a big cosmic knee-slapper?

Heh.

Hey, South Carolinians, if you’re going to insist on license plates that say “I Believe,” and want them to pass Constitutional muster, put Grant Teaff’s face on them. I’d buy one.

Back in 2007, I created a chart that showed the “Most Valuable Cities,” the cities that had earned the most MVP awards in the four major sports over the last fifty years (when all the sports started giving out MVP awards). The following is an updated chart with the 2007 and 2008 winners, enjoy.

The cities with the most MVP awards since 1957 are:

Not much change from last year, with leaders Boston, New York, and Los Angeles all gaining one point apiece - and congrats to Washington for getting off the schneid with Ovechkin’s win of the Hart today.

Note: There are five major MVP awards in pro sports. The oldest (surprisingly) is the Hart Memorial Trophy in hockey, given for the first time to the immortal Frank Nighbor of the Ottawa Senators in 1924. Then there’s the American League and National League MVP awards given out by the Baseball Writer’s Association of America; Frankie Frisch of the Cardinals and Lefty Grove of the old Philadelpha A’s won the inaugural awards in 1931. The NBA followed suit in 1956; Bob Pettit of the St. Louis Hawks won the first MVP award in basketball. The NFL has two different MVP awards, one offered by the Associated Press and one by the Pro Football Writers of America, not to mention the Bert Bell Award — but these usually track each other pretty closely. (Obviously, there are also awards in other sports, like NASCAR and golf, but it’s hard to assign those wins to a city as such.)

In this chart, I am starting with the year 1957, because that’s 50 years ago and that’s when the AP started giving out the NFL MVP award. I’m using both the AL and NL MVPs, even though that gives a substantial bias to baseball, but I don’t know how else you do it, and I like baseball anyway. I’m including Joe Thornton, the 1997 NHL winner, as a San Jose player even though he started the year out in Boston.

So the NYT wants us to eat less meat, eh?

LET’S suppose you’ve decided to eat less meat, or are considering it. And let’s ignore your reasons for doing so. They may be economic, ethical, altruistic, nutritional or even irrational. The arguments for eating less meat are myriad and well-publicized, but at the moment they’re irrelevant, because what I want to address here is (almost) purely pragmatic: How do you do it?

I’m not talking about eating no meat; I’m talking about cutting back, which in some ways is harder than quitting. Vegetarian recipes and traditions are everywhere. But in the American style of eating — with meat usually at the center of the plate — it can be difficult to eat two ounces of beef and call it dinner.

Who cares how? Go! Eat less beef! Eat less chicken! Eat less wonderful, delicious pork! You know what that means? More meat for me.

Now, you may say, well, CDE, that’s all well and good for you to say, but won’t less demand for meat actually lead to higher meat prices? Answer: yes, but at higher prices, you can expect more production of better, leaner, more healthier meat. All that kicking people who don’t appreciate meat out of the meat market really does is decrease the market for substandard meat.

Now, you may say, well, won’t these people (once they get tired of salads and pilafs) inevitably migrate to faux meats - fungus-based meat substitutes, lab-grown meat, etc? Fine. Let ‘em. It’s all the same thing - more meat for me.

In fact, I’ll echo the great Charlton Heston; the only way you’ll get the T-bone away from me if you pry it out of my cold dead hands.

Why do more Democrats show up at Obama rallies than Republicans show up at McCain rallies? Republicans have jobs.

Deep within a gushing CNN.com profile of humorist Stephen Colbert, we see this wicked little googly:

Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer appeared on the show several times, including one visit that records show came just minutes before he telephoned to schedule a meeting with a prostitute. Colbert later joked that his “whore-dar” wasn’t functioning properly.

Spitzer had been a guest for one of the show’s most memorable episodes: a surreal guitar “shred-off” complete with a cameo from Henry Kissinger. How Colbert views having who many consider a war criminal on the show is reflective of his politics: humor trumps all else.

You want to know what really trumps all else? Liberal media bias. Stephen Colbert could tell you about that, of course.

Henry Kissinger, war criminal. Forsooth.

Here’s a question:  does the United Kingdom have two established religions?  There’s the Church of England, of course, but if the Crown is in fact spending more time, energy and treasure on Islam than it is on Christianity, then you have to ask the question.

As a (at least nominal) Southern Baptist, I am an upstanding disestablishmentarian (no antidisestablishmentarian I), but if you take a vow at your coronation to be the “Defender of the Faith”, it seems to me that you might, actually, you know, do something to defend it, rather than accept the standard post-colonial diversity mush like:

Abdullah Badawi claimed that the legacy of Britain’s imperial past has hampered its ability to appreciate its Islamic population.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the prime minister urged Gordon Brown to allow the country’s Muslims to live under Islamic law, but also said that they must prove their worth to society.

Mr Abdullah argues that the Government must do more to ensure Muslims do not feel discriminated against if it is to tackle the rise of radicalism.

“The failure to understand Muslims is driving a divide between the communities,” he said.

“Gordon Brown must encourage a better understanding because Britain must appreciate its Muslims.”

Mr Abdullah argued that Britain needs to come to terms with being home to immigrants from countries that it used to rule over.

“The British Empire expanded in Asia, everywhere, throughout the Muslim land, through the land of Hindus and the land of Buddhists.

“When they were ruling it was different because they wanted it to be peaceful and to keep it peaceful they had to use diplomacy.”

He said that Muslims in Britain were more likely to be radicalised because they feel ignored rather than due to religious reasons.

“Is it because of poverty, social unrest, deprivation, feeling discriminated against, thinking people don’t care much because of the colour of their skin?”

The big bestseller in Japan some years back was called “The Japan That Can Say No,” although I don’t remember right offhand what it was that Japan was to say No to.  We need a Western Civilization that can say No, too — no to phony allegations of racism, no to white liberal guilt, no to accommodation of ghastly customs like “honor killing” dressed up in the guise of faith, and especially, no to this sort of claptrap.

So says Time:

Women often tell me it’s important to get more of them elected so they can change the tenor of politics. But that goal has faced some tough choices in the Democratic contest. “He’s the girl in the race,” explains Marie Wilson, head of the White House Project, a nonprofit that helps women move into positions of leadership. “Clinton came out tough; she voted for the war. Obama came out as the person bringing people together and offering messages of hope and reconciliation.”

Although [Minnesota’s Senator Amy] Klobuchar approvingly cites Obama’s practice of feminine politics (”He uses things like the Jeremiah Wright controversy as teachable moments”), she knows as well as anyone that female politicians still face some skepticism. Three months into her Senate tenure, Klobuchar was in an elevator with some aides when a gop colleague entered and gently chided them for taking the Senators-only elevator.

Oh, those nasty mean old Republican Senators, wanting nothing more than to deny women access to the corridors — and the elevators — of power! (Doesn’t say when this happened, but I bet it was Strom Thurmond, and I bet he forgot his eyeglasses that day. Heh.)

Anyway, that ain’t the point. I had not, until right this second thought of Obama as “the girl in the race.” (I suspect this is a self-esteem issue for people who had their self-esteem parked in the Clinton lot, but that’s not the point either.)

The obvious comparison is to the claptrap about Bill Clinton being “the first black president.” That was (and is) claptrap, because the idea was to excuse Clinton’s infidelity, moral poverty, and appetites on his “blackness”, and thereby attributing those particular vices to black America, when they’re just as common everywhere else in this fallen world. And to suggest that Barack Obama is “the first woman president” is about as useless a trope.  (Or, to put it another way, as useful as saying that the Rev. Wright affair was a “teaching moment” when all it should have taught anybody was that people who have a history of making loudmouth provocative statements aren’t going to suddenly get less loudmouthed or provocative when they get behind the mike at the National Press Club, and that defending such people is a recipe for trouble.)

But is there any truth to Sen. Klobuchar’s assertion that Obama is using feminine politics to his advantage?

Well, okay.  Let’s start with the obvious cheap shot.  Google “Barack Obama” and “metrosexual” and you get almost 60,000 hits, for one thing.  (The NYT story about Obama’s “body man”, in which he reveals Obama’s taste for steamed broccoli, protein bars and organic tea, as well as his apparent distaste for Budweiser, is instructive here.)

There is all the juvenile swooning over Obama, in part by people who you think would know better (in and out of the media) but apparently do not.  This is not to say that this makes Obama feminine or womanly in any way, mind you, but yeesh.

So what we have left is Obama’s hope and reconciliation claptrap, and the dim outlines of his foreign policy.  I’d hate to be the one to say that vapid, content-free (and unenforcible) promises to bring America together are in some way “feminine”; it’s perfectly stereotypical to say that men are about conflict and women are about unity.   I will admit that there’s something feminine in the idea that all one has to do as President is (let’s say) going to Pyongang and talking to that nasty old Dear Leader and getting him to be a good boy and eat all his vegetables and stop playing with those dirty chunks of plutonium when you don’t know where they’ve been.  But that is (God, I hope so) a bit of an oversimplification of Obama’s policies, and I don’t think even the dimmest, most-blinkered tree-hugging Berkeley peacenik (paging Cindy Sheehan) would stoop to that sort of thing if they had real access to power, be they male or female.

I don’t see much that’s girlish about Barack Obama.  But then I’m not a girl, and Obama has always been more of a mirror than anything else — or worse, a blank page for people to project their hopes (the Europeans will like us again!) and their fears (that ol’ boy’s a Muslim, I tell you whut).  Maybe women see a femininity in Obama that I don’t.

H/T:  Althouse.

Yo! Mike Karns!

You don’t know me, but that’s okay, because I never heard of you, either. Doesn’t matter. I have just one thing to tell you. And that’s this.

I grew up in Dallas. I live in Jersey now. I get to come home to Dallas once a year, maybe twice some years. And every time I do, every time I can, I eat at El Fenix. (Maybe the one by the Parks, maybe the one in Grapevine, maybe the one in Mesquite, maybe the old one downtown.) You get me? Once a year.

So help me God, if you foul up El Fenix, if you change the tortilla soup recipe, if you water down the salsa, if you do one blessed thing to the Wednesday enchilada special, I will not be pleased. I will hold you responsible. I will hunt you down. I will have no compunction about it, either — no remorse, no fellow-feeling, no queso of human kindness. I will find you. And you will pay.

Thank you and good day.

UPDATE: The bad news; Mr. Karns used to work for CiCi’s Pizza. I used to love CiCi’s when I was a starving law student and needed the all-you-can-eat nourishment of the CiCi’s buffet (preferably during school hours, don’t you know) but CiCi’s is to pizza what Alex Rodriguez is to class.

The good news? Mr. Karns thinks Grand Prairie is “El Fenix-deprived”. Give that man a chimichanga.

With experience comes maturity, and the knowledge that there are worse things in life than getting dressed, driving to the gym, getting on the motherless treadmill, and walking a mile or so.  (A mile and a half today, in fact, in a little under forty minutes, 2.3 mph.)  I thought about explaining them all here (most of it real-estate related but not all) and then thought better of it, but there are perfectly good reasons why I haven’t walked a lick in the past five months.

We are in the new house, and the new gym is but two miles away, and I can change my clothes in our sitting room, watching ESPN and scratching my feet.  So that’s better.  But it’s still a treadmill (they don’t call it a fun-time happy zone, you know) and I’m still fat and miserable (lost 20 pounds on Weight Watchers this winter and gained most of it back).  And I am not enjoying the knowledge that I’ve lost what little exercise-related momentum I may have had; certainly the ability to walk three miles without undue complaining is gone.  And I doubt I’ll make the (now unreasonable) goal I had set.

But there are worse things, and there’s always tomorrow.