Monthly Archives: August 2008

The NFL’s next flagship stadium

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Dallas Stadium_fReliant Stadium in Houston is a nice and comfortable place to watch sporting events, but this Wired Magazine article reports that the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington looks to take the stadium experience to an entirely new level.

"The Dallas Cowboys are moving house — Texas style. When the team’s new arena opens next year, it will be the largest, most tech-laden stadium in the NFL (and one of the biggest sports facilities of any kind on the planet). Its $1.1 billion price includes the most ginormous retractable roof ever built, massive end-zone doors, and the world’s biggest hi-def LED screens." Not to mention locker rooms that include "power outlets, data ports, and televisions at each locker, plus ceiling-recessed projectors in the center of the changing rooms for reviewing plays." Or that "the giant arches holding up the stadium will measure 1,225 feet from end to end – roughly the length of the Empire State Building.”

Damn!

Martin Wolf on Capitalism

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bill-gates The new Creative Capitalism blog created by Bill Gates, Michael Kinsley and Conor Clarke is quickly making an interesting corner of the blogosphere. Today, Martin Wolf, the associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, pens this remarkable blog post about what a company is, and what it is not, under different political systems. In so doing, Wolf provides a an engaging overview of the underlying forces that drive market economies. Read the entire post, but here here is a taste:

First, one has to distinguish the goal of the firm from its role. The role of companies is to provide valuable goods and services – that is to say, outputs worth more than their inputs. The great insight of market economics is that they will do this job best if they are subject to competition. Profit-maximization (or shareholder value maximization, its more sophisticated modern equivalent) is NOT the role of the firm. It is its goal. The goal of profit-maximization drives the firm to fulfill its role.

Second, by creating a competitive market for corporate control, we more or less force companies to maximize shareholder value, or at least behave in ways that the market believes will lead them to do so.   .    .

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Say what, Doc?

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redcross_flag Inasmuch as my family and social groups include a large number of medical doctors, I’ve noticed that the slang that the docs use when they are talking shop can be incomprehensible at times. That’s why this comprehensive list of Doctor’s Slang, Medical Slang and Medical Acronyms will come in handy. A few good ones:

"Blade" — Surgeon: dashing, bold, arrogant and often wrong, but never in doubt (very much appreciated by the primary care doctors);

"Captain Kangaroo" — chairman of the pediatrics department;

"DTMA" — Stands for "Don’t Transfer to Me Again";

"Fonzie" — Unflappable medic;

"Improving His Claim" — Victim of minor accident, needs no treatment but wants something to support his insurance/legal claim;

"Masochist" — Trauma surgeon;

"Sadomasochist" – Neurosurgeon

"NOCTOR"– A nurse who has done a 6 week training course and acts like she or he is a Doctor;

"Two beers" — the number of beers every patient involved in an alcohol-related automobile accident claims to have drunk before the accident.

Check out the entire list. Those docs are a tough bunch.

Richard Justice’s Kumbaya Weekend

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KUMBAYA Allow me to ask the following question again: Why is Richard Justice allowed to write about sports for a major metropolitan newspaper?

This weekend’s Justice missives were particularly banal, which is saying something when it comes to his writings.

First, he led with this fawning blog post about Vince Young and the University of Texas. I guess one has to have attended UT to understand.

That one was followed by this one about Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps being some sort of cultural unifier. Yes, he’s a really good swimmer, but .  .  .

Finally, Justice finished the weekend by heaping more hero worship on former Stros star, Craig Biggio, who is deserving of praise, but come on.

Frankly, it does not reflect well on the Chronicle that it dedicates more resources to accommodating Justice’s blather than it provides in informing the public about one of Houston’s true heroes of the past 30 years.  

Fashion trends

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Check out Esquire’s slideshow (on the left below) illustrating the evolution of men’s fashion over the past 75 years. Then, take a look at this Time Magazine slideshow (on the right below) exhibiting the worst of golf fashion over the past century.

My sense is that there is a connection.

 1933 suit

golf_fashion_04

Dr. Ralph Feigen, R.I.P.

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Dr. Feigin In this recent post on the death of Michael DeBakey, I noted that a substantial part of Dr. DeBakey’s legacy was his involvement in the massive importation of talented medical professionals to Houston over the past 60 years. That talent transformed the Texas Medical Center from a sleepy regional medical center into one of the largest and most dynamic medical centers in the world.

Dr. Ralph Feigen, who died at the age of 70 on Thursday,epitomizes the doctors who have been at the center of that transformation.

Drawn to Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine at the age of 40 in 1977, Dr. Feigen spent the rest of his life in Houston cultivating a culture of excellence in research and patient care that turned Texas Children’s into one of the largest and best pediatric hospitals in the world. Dr. Feigen was an excellent teacher, superb clinician and a highly-regarded researcher, but his personal warmth for his patients is what thousands of parents and their children will remember most about this fine man. A large part of Dr. Feigen’s legacy is that Texas Children’s — despite its enormous growth over the past 30 years — still reflects the comfortable warmth of its long-time leader.

Todd Ackerman, the Chronicle’s fine medical reporter, summarizes Dr. Feigen’s enormous impact well (the NY Times obituary is here):

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Mapping Olympic Medals

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The New York Times has the best Olympics online coverage page that I’ve seen. Particularly well-done are the daily schedule and the Olympic Medals page, the latter of which maps the medals as they are won and provides a map of medals for each Olympiad since 1896. Check it out.

NY Time Olympic Page

Cowboy business

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Cowboys Stadium-Night-Shot_0 The Texans are the toast of their local cheerleading team, but the unquestioned NFL team of Texas remains the Dallas Cowboys. This Glenn Hunter/D Magazine interview of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones confirms that the Cowboys business model is performing very, very well:

With the Cowboys, you’re said to lead the league in corporate sponsorships. Can you give me an idea how much those relationships are worth each year?

We’ve got significant, long-term relationships with Dr Pepper, Miller Lite, Pepsi, Bank of America. If you would aggregate those key, basic long-term sponsorships, that would exceed $50 million annually. We have smaller relationships through our broadcasting, radio and television.

And for merchandising, would $50 million be a good number?

The wholesale-merchandising area is a very, very proprietary number that has a lot involved with it. Let’s see, how to say this? Our wholesaling and retailing combined, as far as financial viability is concerned, is on par with what we do with sponsorships. They are equal in their contribution to the Cowboys.

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The fall of a demagogue

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Hunter-Edwards- I wasn’t going to blog anything about John Edwards’ recent public admission to an affair with Rielle Hunter. As has been noted many times previously on this blog, Edwards is a demagogue who represents the worst in American national politics. I would have much preferred that Edwards’ demagoguery be the reason for the demise of his political career rather than a tawdry affair that is hurtful to Edwards’ innocent family members, even if it was "oncologically correct," as Maureen Dowd put it.

But turning to Ms. Hunter, check out this Jonathan Darman/Newsweek article. What a piece of work. Once Hunter decided to pounce, Edwards never had a chance. It almost makes one feel sorry for him. Almost.

By the way, while considering matters political, don’t miss Josh Green’s Atlantic piece on the demise of the Hillary Clinton campaign (previous posts here).

Here we go again?

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Ryder Cup 2008 With the completion of the PGA Championship this past weekend, the eight automatic qualifiers for the 12-man 2008 U.S. Ryder Cup team were named for next month’s matches at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville (Sept. 16-21).  U.S. team captain Paul Azinger will complete the 12-member roster by announcing his four Captain’s selections Tuesday, Sept. 2, at 10 a.m. at the Hotel Martinique on Broadway in New York City.

The automatic qualifiers are the following:

Player                 Points

Phil Mickelson    5,342.500

Stewart Cink      4,952.665

Kenny Perry       4,480.700

Jim Furyk           4,423.892

Anthony Kim     4,035.296

Justin Leonard  3,379.274

Ben Curtis         3,120.061

Boo Weekley     2,785.095

My sense is that this group isn’t sending shivers up the spine of the European team, which has recently dominated the U.S. team, winning four of the past five matches. The U.S. team is younger than prior teams with three of the eight (Ben Curtis, Anthony Kim and Boo Weekley) participating in their first Ryder Cup. Phil Mickelson is the veteran of the U.S. team by virtue of making his seventh consecutive appearance in the matches, but he is coming off a pathetic 1-7-1 record in the past two matches.

At least Mickelson played reasonably well over the past two weeks, contending for both titles and tying for seventh at the PGA Championship. Likewise, Furyk (29th) and Weekley (20th) played decently at the PGA even though they were not in contention for the title, while Curtis played very well in tying for second place.

However, Kim and Justin Leonard disappeared during the weekend rounds, Stewart Cink didn’t even make the cut and Kenny Perry withdrew after the first round after scratching his cornea with a wayward contact lense. Leonard and Perry have never won a Ryder Cup match, and Mickelson, Furyk and Cink have an aggregate Ryder Cup record of 18-29-10.

Meanwhile, Euro team members Padraig Harrington (first place), Sergio Garcia (second place tie with Curtis), Henrik Stenson (tied for fourth) and Justin Rose (tied for ninth) were stellar during the PGA Championship.

Is anyone else getting a bad feeling about this year’s matches? At least the U.S. team won’t have to deal with being the favorite going into the matches.