Clear Thinkers favorite Arnold Kling continues in this TCS op-ed to provide his typically insightful analysis on what is needed to reform America’s health care finance system. He concludes:
“[R]eal health care reform in the United States will not happen because of some wonk’s clever plan. It will not happen as a result of an election. It will only happen when we change some of our beliefs about health care.”
Read the entire piece.
Good for Bidg that he collects his 3,000th hit on a night where he goes 5 for 6 and helped set up Carlos Lee’s walk-off bottom of the 11th grand slam to pull out an 8-5 win over the Rockies. That’s the Craig Biggio that Houstonians who have admired his magnificent 20 year career want to remember.
There are many tributes today around the web and in the Chronicle today, but John Lopez’s and the Plunk Biggio tributes are the best that I’ve read. Here are
a few of my blog posts on Bidg over the years:
A good man’s worthy cause (August 25, 2004);
Bidg sets the MLB hit by pitch record (June 29, 2005);
One of the downsides of the pursuit of 3,000 (August 26, 2005);
The remarkable Mr. Biggio (October 4, 2005); and
Where Bidg stands among the Stros’ best hitters of all-time (February 26, 2007).
Bidg’s career statistics through last night’s game are below, the best reflection of his certain Hall of Fame career.
The adventures of Carl Icahn are a common topic on this blog, so the following Icahn observations from a WSJ-sponsored conference caught my eye:
At The Wall Street Journalís Deals & Deal Makers Conference, Icahn summed up his approach to executives of companies he takes over this way: ìThe secret is donít manage.î (Okay, he went on to say ìdonít micromanage.î)
And what wonders can be achieved with so little effort. ìThere are few companies I canít go in to today and save 30%. A lot of companies are very wasteful.î (Call it the Seinfeld theory of management, after the sit-com famous for being about nothing.) One company that decided it could do without Icahnís services is Motorola. The billionaire this year unsuccessfully fought to get on the board of the cellphone maker. ìI really didnít care a hell of a lot to be on the board,î he said of the experience.
Icahn isnít the biggest fan of U.S. and Western European CEOs. (ìWhen you get into a lot of corporationsÖtheyíre much worse than you think. I mean, theyíre really terribly run.î) He also discussed his ìDarwin Theoryî of corporate governance, according to which there is a sliding scale of intelligence on corporate ladders. Why? Each manager starting with the CEO ensures that the person below him is dumber so as not to be threatened.
No one will accuse Icahn of not speaking his mind. He was one of the few attendees at the conference to predict that the private-equity market has peaked. Of the leveraged-buyout firms like Blackstone Group that are going public, he said: ìThese guys arenít stupid and thatís one reason why theyíre monetizing.î
Meanwhile, John Carney over at DealBreaker reports the following Icahn anecdote from the WSJ conference:
Carl Icahn tried to short the stock of the Blackstone group immediately after its IPO, the billionaire “corporate raider” told an audience at a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.
“I tried to borrow the stock but I couldn’t do it in time,” Icahn said.
After he spoke to the conference, Icahn asked reporters not to print the story of his attempt to short Blackstone.
Mark Sisson (earlier post here) is now blogging on nutrition and exercise issues, and one of his first posts provides this good overview of the often misunderstood interrelationship between insulin, blood sugar and Type 2 diabetes. As Sisson notes, “we are all, in an evolutionary sense, predisposed to becoming diabetic.”
Stephanie Stradley, who did a good job of blogging the Houston Texans last season as the “Texans Chick” over at the Chronicle, is now blogging over at the NFL Fanhouse. She passes along this interesting item regarding Texans’ star wide receiver Andre Johnson’s comparison of new Texans QB Matt Schaub and former Texans punching bag, er, I mean, QB, David Carr. Johnson’s comments are particularly interesting given Carr’s recent remarks (see here) regarding his time with the Texans.
H’mm. Any surprise that Carr’s Texan teammates never voted him to be one of the team’s captains?
You know it’s about time for the college football season to begin when the first story appears proclaiming that Texas A&M football coach Dennis Franchione remains on the hot seat (Brett Zwerneman of the San Antonio Express-News):
. . .Anyway, an Aggies neighbor here in town firmly stated Monday that this is Dennis Franchioneís make-or-break season in College Station. I didnít realize she had that much pull with the Aggies brass.
I argued that A&M will have a better team than last season — and a worse record. For starters to a tough last two-thirds of the schedule, the Aggies play a non-conference, Thursday night road game at Miami, a recently-proud program now under first-year coach Randy Shannon. [. . .]
Last year, A&M squeezed out a three-point victory at KU and a one-point victory in overtime at OSU. This year, A&M plays league road games at Texas Tech, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri.
The Aggies havenít won in Lubbock since 1993. They havenít won in Lincoln, Neb., since 1955 (no, I didnít cover that game). They havenít won in Norman, Okla., since 1997. They havenít won in Columbia, Mo., since 1999.
In other words, A&M hasnít won at any of those places this millennium (or century, if that grabs you more). In 2003, Franchioneís first season at A&M and the last time the Aggies played this league slate, A&M lost at the above four hotspots by a combined 167 points.
One-hundred-and-sixty-seven points! (Right, that team didnít have Mike Goodson. You got me.)
Obviously theyíve got a little ground to make up. . . .
The entire column is here.
Maybe Phil Mickelson wasn’t the only casualty of the recent U.S. Open at Oakmont. Chris Lewis reports the following:
USGA Head Agronomist Ousted: U.S. Open Fallout?
Word on the superintendent grapevine is that Tim Moraghan, the USGAís head agronomist, has been relieved of his post.
USGA spokesperson Marty Parkes, contacted by telephone at the U.S. Womenís Open site at Pine Needles in North Carolina, would not officially confirm or deny the rumors, but did say the grounds were being overseen this week not by Moraghan, but by ìan agronomist from the green section in this part of the country.î
The talk of Moraghanís dismissal, which surfaced on Monday, suggested it had to do with disagreements among USGA personnel about course set-ups and playing conditions at recent U.S. Opens.
Moraghan had been with the USGA for about 20 years.
Given the recent criticism of USGA president Walter Driver here and here, perhaps the USGA is in need of more than a shakeup than merely firing the agronomist?
As noted in the update to this earlier post, longtime Rice athletics, Stros, Oilers, UH Track, Texas Relays, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Houston Marathon (and goodness knows what else!) announcer J. Fred Duckett died earlier this week. A visitation for the family will be held from 6-8 p.m. today at George H. Lewis Funeral Home (1010 Bering Drive) and a memorial service will be held at Autry Court on the Rice University Campus at 1:00 on Friday (park in the West Lot #4). The Rice University Athletic Department has also set up this webpage for friends of J. Fred to pass along their remembrances of this fine man, one of the many who make Houston such a special place to live.
I’ve noted in several previous posts (here and here) how Stros management has hurt the club and thumbed its nose at the integrity of baseball by indulging Craig Biggio’s quest for 3,000 hits, but Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan really lays the wood to Biggio and Stros management in this BP column ($):
Last night, the Astros started Chris Burke at second base, batting him sixth and using Mark Loretta as their leadoff man in their 6-1 loss to the Brewers. . . . [Stros manager] Phil Garner hasnít had a sudden change of heart about the best alignment of his available talent; no, heís sitting Craig Biggio in two of these three games to prevent Biggio from notching his 3,000th career hit on the road.
Set aside for the moment the issue of whether the Astros are better with Burke at second base and Loretta batting leadoff, which is certainly the case. That was also the case on Opening Day, but Garner has pencilled Biggioís name into the lineup 62 times, including 59 times in the leadoff spot. He decided at the beginning of the season that Biggio was his starting second baseman, and no amount of out-making was going to change that. Biggio’s .279 OBP wasnít the reason he was on the bench last night.
Consider the context as well. The Astros, in no small part because of that .279 OBP from their leadoff hitter, were 32-43 heading into last night’s game, 11 games behind the Brewers. I don’t think the Astros are serious contenders any more than the next guy does, but if they were going to make a push, it would certainly help to go into Miller Park and win three games. Doing so would seem to require playing your starters. Garner elected to not do so last night. Consider that the Astros were dead and buried in both 2004 and 2005 before making runs to the NLCS and World Series, respectively. If any team can take itself seriously from 11 games out with nearly 90 to play, itís these Astros.
Pull that all together for a second. Astros manager Phil Garner went into a do-or-die series with a division leader and benched his starting second baseman not for any reason related to merit, but so that an individual achievement can be celebrated in a certain manner. He put a statistic, a person and a show ahead of the teamís goals. He and the Astros have been doing this all year of course just by playing Biggio, but the naked manipulation of playing time in what should be a key series is galling.
Check out this Bob Carney/Golf Digest blog post about the second annual Harmon Brothers Teaching Summit this November 4-7 in Las Vegas. As noted in earlier posts here and here regarding the late Dick Harmon, and this one regarding the late Claude Harmon, Sr., the Harmon family has long and deep ties to Houston. Although aimed primarily at golf teachers, the Harmon Brothers Teaching Summit is open to a limited number of golf swing enthusiasts. And the faculty is pretty darn impressive, including Mike Bender, he of the “Stack and Tilt” swing method, which is really just a variation on Jim Hardy’s one-plane swing. The Harmon brothers are an entertaining bunch (their late father could have been a standup comedian), so this could be a fun way to spend a quick Vegas golf vacation.
By the way, check out “the dorm” for the participants in the summit. ;^)