Pico Iyer asks an interesting question: Why is service on U.S. airlines so bad compared with that in other U.S. industries? In particular, he asks:
“Why is it, I often wonder, that US carriers have far and away the worst ó most surly, inattentive and often snooty ó service in the world?”
Larry Ribstein figured out the answer to this enigma long ago — creative destruction.
Charlie Brooker, writing in The Guardian about the dreadful quality of Christmas season television commercials, nails the line of the day (H/T Tim Worstall) with regard to the latest ad featuring those British icons, the Spice Girls:
Speaking of embarrassments, the Spice Girls have managed to imbue their long-awaited comeback with all the glamour and class of a hurried crap in a service station toilet by whoring themselves out to Tesco. The first instalment, in which the Girl Power quartet try to hide from each other while shopping for presents, represents a important landmark for the performing arts: Posh Spice becomes the first human being in history to be out-acted by a shopping trolley.
(David J. Phillip/AP Photo; previous weekly reviews here)
Texans 34 Broncos 13
It was the Mario Williams show last Thursday evening as the second-year defensive end dominated the line of scrimmage in leading Texans’ (7-7) to a convincing victory over the Denver Broncos (6-8). Backup QB Sage Rosenfels chipped in with his second straight efficient performance in leading the Texans’ offense to one of its best outputs of the season (358 yds total offense/200 yds passing on 16-27 passes/158 yds rushing). And no one should overlook the fact that the Texans’ offense is a different unit altogether when WR Andre Johnson (6 catches for 86 yds) — who missed eight games earlier in the season with a knee injury — is punishing opposing teams’ secondaries with his special combination of size and speed. About the only thing wrong with the Texans on Thursday night was their all-red uniforms, which made the players look like a bunch of rather large lollypops.
But the real story surrounding the play of Williams has been the blogosphere’s exposing of the vacuous, irresponsible and mostly unwarranted criticism of Williams over his first two seasons by much of the local mainstream media. When the Texans chose Williams over local favorite Vince Young and USC RB Reggie Bush as the first player taken in the 2006 NFL Draft, the local mainstream media crucified Texans management and Williams, even though a few of us in the blogosphere noted at the time that it was not an unreasonable selection.
Then, as Stephanie Stradley masterfully recounts here, the local mainstream media continued to criticize the Texans and Williams throughout the 2006 season and even much of this season. Although Williams pass-rushing ability was hampered during the 2006 season because he played the entire season with a painful injury (planters fasciitis), Williams actually played quite well against the run. Then, this season, with his mobility no longer limited by injury, Williams has continued to play well against the run and, over the past five games, has exploded into one of the best pass-rushers in the NFL. But until recently, much of the local mainstream media continued to characterize Williams as a bust, although Williams’ spectacular play over the past couple of games has generated a number of mea culpas.
Sally Satel, the receipient of Virginia Postrel’s kidney (see also here), authored this amazing NY Times Magazine article in which she describes the overwhelming emotions that donors and would-be recipients go through under the current system of donating organs:
A week after my 49th birthday in January 2005, half a year after being given a diagnosis of renal failure, a friend and I were drinking coffee at a Starbucks when I wondered aloud if I would find a donor before I reached 50. I wasnít hinting. I knew she would never offer because she was so squeamish about blood and pain. My friend, whom I met a decade before when we were both new to Washington and worked together on an advocacy project, was a little older than I; she was charming, stylish, smart ó and a hypochondriac.
Nor, to be honest, did I want her kidney. Anyone as anxious about health as she was would surely view donation as a white-knuckle ordeal. And the bigger the sacrifice for her, the heavier the burden of reciprocity on me. The bigger the burden on me, the more I would resent her. Then I would feel guilty over resenting her and, in turn, resent the guilt. Who could survive inside this echo chamber of reverberating emotions? Thank goodness my friend would be holding on to her kidney.
Jim Dwyer of the NY Times reports that Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s ideas about transparency in government are quite similar to his crimebuster practices.
Amidst the slow progress of the United States’ diplomatic efforts to bring North Korea into the community of the world’s civilized nations (previous posts on North Korea are here), this recent W$J op-ed by Shin Dong-Hyok — who lived the first 23 years of his life in a North Korean gulag — reminds us of the stakes to humanity involved in finding a way to release the North Korean government’s death grip on North Koreans:
I was born a prisoner on Nov. 19, 1982, and until two years ago, North Korea’s Political Prison Camp No. 14 was the only place I had ever called home. [. . .]
I was a slave under club and fist. It was a world where love, happiness, joy or resistance found no meaning. This was the situation I found myself in until I escaped to China, and then South Korea. There, I was told why I was imprisoned by my distant relatives, who had escaped to the South during the Korean War.
In the midst of that conflict, two of my father’s brothers fled to freedom. Because of this “traitorous” crime, my grandparents, father and uncle back in the North were found guilty of treason and crimes against the state, and were arrested. My father and uncle were separated from each other and my grandparents, and were stripped of all identification and property.
I’ve already shared my views many times on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, so I didn’t want to comment on the Mitchell Commission Report until I had an opportunity to read it. Now that I have, here’s my bottom-line conclusion:
$20 million for that?
What is initially most striking about the Mitchell Report is its sloppiness (couldn’t they even fix the line spacing and pagination before publishing the damn thing?). The only hard evidence in the 400 plus page report is exhibit D, which contains copies of checks and money orders that players and trainers allegedly used to buy performance-enhancing drugs from Kirk Radomski.
Thus, in almost two years of “work,” the only hard evidence that the Mitchell Commission could generate is that which was given to them by federal prosecutors who investigated and prosecuted Radomski, and then leaned on him to talk with the commission. There is a discussion dealing with the BALCO and Signature pharmacy investigations, but the product of the rest of the commission’s work is statements attributed to anonymous and a relatively few named individuals who contend that they know about certain players who used performance-enhancing drugs.
Meanwhile, the report’s lack of perspective is stunning. One section is actually devoted to sportswriter comments on baseball and steroids! What is that doing in a supposedly serious report? There is no mention of the scientific uncertainty regarding the impact that steroids and other PEDs have on performance in baseball. Similarly, there is no statistical analysis to support the report’s suggestion that PED use was even a meaningful factor in the elevated hitting levels of the late 1990’s. As anyone who follows baseball knows, there were numerous variables besides performance-enhancing drugs that impacted the surge in hitting during the late 1990’s.
And that’s not all. The report fails to place its findings in the context of the fact that MLB had no enforceable policy or regulation banning steroids until September 2002, did not have a testing program until 2004 and did not ban human growth hormone until 2005. As a number of commentators have already noted, why on earth are Mark McGwire and other ballplayers being condemned for taking androstenedione (a supplement that produces testosterone) when it could be purchased over-the-counter and didn’t even violate MLB rules at the time?
But what is arguably most galling about the Mitchell Commission Report is its utter lack of historical perspective regarding the use of PEDs within the highly-competitive environment of professional baseball.
Performance-enhancing drugs have been a mainstay of professional baseball for at least the past two generations. Before the steroid era, the PED of choice in MLB was amphetamines, which — as with steroids over the past decade — were used liberally and with the tacit consent of the MLB clubs. Amidst the catcalls from some corners that players who used steroids should be denied entry into the Hall of Fame, it should be noted that no serious consideration has even been given to denying a place in the Hall to star players who used amphetamines during their careers.
As with steroids, amphetamine use was the direct result of the physically-draining nature of the MLB season and the pathologically competitive environment that the MLB owners promote and MLB fans love. The players who took steroids and other PED’s over the past decade were attempting to improve their bodies’ capacity to endure that punishing workload (regardless of whether their protocols were really effective), just as the players who used amphetamines in earlier eras were attempting to improve their attention span and reaction time.
Isn’t it ironic that the Mitchell Commission and much of the mainstream media vilifies professional ballplayers who used PEDs in an attempt to prevent their bodies from breaking down, while MLB management and the same mainstream media for decades have lauded “tough” injured players who “played with pain” through their ailments, even as MLB clubs pressured medication on the players, often at serious risk to the players’ health and careers?
The Mitchell Commission didn’t have access to most of the players because of the Players Union’s decision not to cooperate, but the commission did have complete access to employees of the MLB clubs and the Baseball Commissioner’s office. Despite that broad access, the report is almost completely silent on the role of MLB management in establishing the culture in which PEDs became an integral part of competing for and maintaining a precious MLB roster spot. Likewise, the report provides precious little information on how the Commissionerís Office and the MLB clubs addressed the growing problem of PEDs in MLB. The Mitchell Commission’s failure to include this readily available information in the report had to be intentional and reflects a concerted effort by the commission to keep the focus of the report on the players.
And Mitchell got $20 mil for his law firm’s work? Good work if you can get it, I guess. But not work of which he should be proud.
Update: J.C. Bradbury proposes a creative way to deter PED use in baseball.
Well, one thing’s clear — new Stros General Manager Ed Wade is not risk averse!
The six player deal that is bringing star shortstop Miguel Tejada to the Stros has already been thoroughly analyzed around the blogosphere, so there really is not much to add. From what I’ve seen, most folks think the Stros gave up too much for Tejada. I’m not sure about that, but I’m not sure that this trade helps the Stros all that much, either.
As regular readers of this blog know, the Stros’ decline over the past two seasons since their World Series team of 2005 has been for different reasons. The 2006 Stros fell short in the mediocre National League Central because their strong pitching finally could not overcome the club’s chronically anemic hitting. Then, after Stros management took steps to improve the club’s hitting for the 2007 season, the Stros pitching staff fell apart as the club’s subpar defense contributed to the staff’s struggles.
The increasing evidence that long-distance running is not healthy has been a frequent topic on this blog, and this Lou Schuler/Men’s Health article surveying the most recent research and expert opinions comes to the same conclusion:
[No expert] today believes that endurance training confers immunity to anything, whether it’s sudden death from heart disease or the heartbreak of psoriasis. Every time you lace up your running shoes, there’s a chance your final kick will involve a bucket, and every expert knows this. [. . .]
The highest death rate is among the men who exercise long and hard, and is much higher than that of the men who exercise short and hard.
Schuler concludes that frequent, short exercise sessions that balance strength-training with moderate aerobic exercise is probably the healthiest approach. Read the entire article.
It’s been such a tough run for the Texas A&M football program this decade that some folks are now questioning the legitimacy of the Aggie football heritage. But not to worry. The Aggies are now number 1 — in bass fishing!