Daily Archives: July 31, 2007

Steyn on the criminalization of everything

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Mark%20Steyn%20color.jpgStill numbed by the experience of blogging the injustice of the Conrad Black trial, Mark Steyn takes up the appalling lack of judgment behind the McMinnville, Oregon district attorney’s prosecution of two 7th grade boys as sex offenders. The alleged criminal act? The egregious offense of participating at school with their classmates in a juvenile greeting ritual on Fridays called “Slap Butt Fridays.” Steyn concludes as follows:

A world that requires handcuffs and judges and district attorneys for what took place that Friday in February is not just a failed education system but an entire society that’s losing any sense of proportion. Without which, civilized life becomes impossible. So we legalize more and more aspects of life and demand that district attorneys prosecute ever more aggressively what were once routine areas of social interaction.
A society that looses the state to criminalize schoolroom horseplay is guilty not only of punishing children as grown-ups but of the infantilization of the entire citizenry.

The WSJ’s George Melloan expressed similar sentiments a couple of years ago.

Does Jose de Jesus Ortiz research anything?

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ortiz%20073107.gifIs shooting from the hip a Houston Chronicle requirement for covering the Stros?
As noted in earlier posts here, here, here, here, here and here, the Chronicle’s Stros beat writer — Jose de Jesus Ortiz — incongruously struggles with analyzing baseball. But on the heels of watching Stros sore-armed starting pitcher Jason Jennings get torched for 11 runs in 2/3rd’s of an inning on Sunday, Ortiz displays his utter ignorance of the history of the club he covers on a daily basis:

Seeing Jason Jennings give up 11 runs while only securing two outs on Sunday afternoon, opposing scouts surely had to tell their bosses not to give up top prospects for the veteran righthander.
Because the Astros made the Jennings trade out of desperation after pushing Andy Pettitte out of town and then failing to acquire Jon Garland, the Jennings trade seemed to be the best the Astros could do at the time.
As it turns out, they could hardly have done worse, especially considering that a little digging in Colorado would have uncovered that Jennings hadn’t thrown bullpen sessions between starts in the second half of the season because of a tender right elbow.
As Tim Purpura heads into Tuesday’s non-waiver trade deadline, let’s look back and see where this trade fits among the worst in franchise history?
What are the worst three trades in franchise history?
Here are my list in order of the worst:
ï Getting rid of Joe Morgan.
ï Getting rid of Billy Wagner for three prospects who didn’t produce.
ï Getting rid of Willy Taveras, Jason Hirsh and Taylor Buchholz for Jennings.

Had Ortiz merely bothered to run a Google Blog Search before publishing the foregoing, he would have discovered that two of the three trades that he lists are not even in the top seven of all-time bad Stros trades.
Then, on one hand, Ortiz contends that the Stros traded Billy Wagner for “three prospects who didn’t produce,” which is not really correct, either. The Phillies sent an established Major League pitcher who was not very good — Brandon Duckworth — along with pitching prospects Taylor Buchholz and Ezequiel Astacio to the Stros for Wagner.
However, undaunted, Ortiz then in the following sentence lists Buchholz — one of the prospects “who didn’t produce” from the Wagner trade — as one of the reasons why the Jennings trade is supposedly the third worst in Stros history.
Is this really the best that the Chronicle can do in covering the Stros?

Endurance training to death

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alberto%20salazar%20073107.jpgAs noted in previous posts here and here, the myth that endurance training and long-distance running are good for one’s health remains firmly entrenched among most Americans, despite sad reminders such as this. In this timely article, Mark Sisson lucidly explains why endurance training is hazardous to one’s health. Here is a snippet:

The problem with many, if not most, age group endurance athletes is that the low-level training gets out of hand. They overtrain in their exuberance to excel at racing, and they over consume carbohydrates in an effort to stay fueled. The result is that over the years, their muscle mass, immune function, and testosterone decrease, while their cortisol, insulin and oxidative output increase (unless you work so hard that you actually exhaust the adrenals, introducing an even more disconcerting scenario). Any anti-aging doc will tell you that if you do this long enough, you will hasten, rather than retard, the aging process. Studies have shown an increase in mortality when weekly caloric expenditure exceeds 4,000. [. . .]
Now, what does all this mean for the generation of us who bought into Ken Cooperís “more aerobics is better” philosophy? Is it too late to get on the anti-aging train? Hey, we’re still probably a lot better off than our college classmates who gained 60 pounds and can’t walk up a flight of stairs. Sure, we may look a little older and move a little slower than we’d like, but there’s still time to readjust the training to fit our DNA blueprint. Maybe just move a little slower, lift some weights, do some yoga and eat right and there’s a good chance you’ll maximize the quality of your remaining yearsÖ and look good doing whatever you do.