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Monthly Archives: October 2009
My favorite rock video
The legendary Roy Orbison, the Boss and James Burton collaborate on one of the best.
Stairway to Heaven
The mind of a true thief
Disgraced New York City attorney Marc Dreier’s letter to his sentencing judge was quite interesting. His recent 60 Minutes interview is just as fascinating.
Dreier — who unquestionably stole over $400 million — received a lighter prison sentence than former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who didn’t steal a dime.
There is a huge difference between what Marc Dreier did and what Jeff Skilling did. It reflects poorly on us that our criminal justice system cannot distinguish between the two.
Fat chance
A couple of interesting health care-related items caught my eye today.
First, I went by my internist’s office for my annual physical and noticed that another group of doctors had leased a much larger office across the hall from my doctor’s office.
I peaked inside the new doctors’ office window and noticed that the reception area was nicely furnished with plush leather sofas and chairs, flat screen TV’s, handsome hardwood flooring and tasteful Persian rugs.
The opulence of the office prompted me to find out what kind of doctors were apparently doing so well, so I grabbed one of the doctor’s cards from the reception area. It read (not the real name):
"John Smith, M.D., Laparoscopic Obesity Surgery"
Meanwhile, this NY Times article reveals the utterly unsurprising fact that New York City regulations requiring fast food restaurants to post the caloric content of their food did not induce obese consumers from eating less:
A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains.
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
The findings, to be published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Health Affairs come amid the spreading popularity of calorie-counting proposals as a way to improve public health across the country.
“I think it does show us that labels are not enough,” Brian Elbel, an assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, said in an interview.
"Labels are not enough?" Makes one wonder what regulation Professor Elbel will suggest next — maybe governmental rationing of fast food?
The argument in favor of these types of absurd governmental intrusions into our lives is that government subsidizes medical insurance, so government should attempt through regulation to decrease obesity, which unfairly heaps a portion of health-care costs relating to obesity on tax-paying citizens who are not obese.
But putting aside for a moment the debatable notion of whether obesity really increases health-care costs all that much, the far more effective regulation to decrease obesity would be to provide a financial incentive for citizens to lose weight. Namely, reduce the governmental subsidy of medical insurance for those who choose to remain obese.
Fat chance of that happening.
Chris Rock on Roman Polanski, Michael Vick and dogs
2009 Weekly local football review
(AP Photo/Dave J. Phillip; previous weekly reviews for this season are here)
So, what happens when the NFL’s worst defense meets one of the NFL’s worst offenses? Well, this time, Raiders (1-3) QB JaMarcus Russell is so bad that the Texans (2-2) defense dominated the game and propelled the local club to an easy victory.
The Texans potent offense played reasonably well in the first half, but after the Texans defense and special teams generated 9 points in about 10 seconds early in the third quarter (a safety and resulting Jacoby Jones kick-return for a TD), the offense simply held serve as the heretofore porous Texans defense held the Raiders to 165 total yards. The lack of offense from both teams made the final half almost unwatchable.
Prediction — Russell will not be a starting NFL QB after this season. Maybe even before the end of this season.
The Texans now enter a tough stretch in their schedule in which they play four out of the next five games on the road before the Week 10 bye-week. First up is the Cardinals (1-2) coming off their bye week in Phoenix.
Note to the Texans defense — Kurt Warner is no JaMarcus Russell.
This one was essentially two games — the first was the initial ten minutes of the game in which the inspired Aggies (3-1) stunned the Razorbacks (2-2) and led 10-0.
Unfortunately for A&M, the other game was the remaining 50 minutes in which the Hogs blitzed the Aggies 47-9.
Look, the Aggies are not without talent, most of it quite young. But when a team is starting a true freshman at left offensive tackle, and mostly freshmen and sophomores comprise the two-deep roster, the reality is that such a team is going to get manhandled from time-to-time by more seasoned squads.
That’s what happened to the Aggies yesterday. But I saw nothing in the game that indicated to me that the Aggies are a lost cause. On the contrary, give this bunch another year of maturity and sprinkle in another group of solid recruits, my sense is that the Aggies will again be competitive with all but the top flight programs (i.e., Texas and Oklahoma) in the Big 12. Even this season, the Aggies could win four more games (@Kansas State, Iowa State, @Colorado and Baylor). The others — Oklahoma State (next week at home), @Texas Tech, @Oklahoma and Texas — appear to be more problematic.
In the meantime, I’m picking Aggies QB Jerrod Johnson to be the QB on my sandlot team.
How does a team such as UTEP (2-3) that didn’t generate 58 yards total offense in its game last week (a 64-7 loss to Texas) turnaround and score that many points in handing formerly 12-ranked Houston (3-1) its first defeat of the season?
The answer is in my first weekly football review of the season:
The trick for the Cougars this season will be to figure out how their young defense — which lacks depth from several seasons of under-recruiting on the defensive side by previous head coach, Art Briles — can maintain the type of gritty effort that the unit displayed against OSU’s potent offense. UH defensive coordinator John Skladany is a master at getting the most out of undermanned defensive units (he was the DC for my friend Dan McCarney during Iowa State’s bowl run earlier this decade), but he will have his work cut out for him in the coming weeks. If the Coogs defensive unit can consistently play at the level it did against OSU, and the team can avoid injuries to key personnel, the Cougars are likely to be a top-20 team.
The Coogs’ defensive unit held up reasonably well against Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, but a hot UTEP squad exposed it for what it is — a young and not particularly physically-imposing group that simply cannot play at the same level as Houston’s high-powered offense.
The difference in this particular game was that Houston’s defense was not able to force any turnovers, which it was able to do in both the OSU and Tech upsets. When the Cougar offense uncharacteristically failed to score on a couple of 2nd quarter trips into the UTEP red zone, that plus the lack of turnovers gave the Miners the edge they needed to pull off the upset.
By the way, even with the upset, Houston QB Case Keenum continues to play at the highest level of any quarterback in the nation through five weeks of the season.
The Cougars will not be able to lick their wounds for long as they take to the road again next week to play tough Mississippi State (2-3), which almost upset 5th-ranked LSU two weeks ago. After that, the Coogs ease into the main part of their Conference USA schedule, which should allow the Cougars to get back on track.
In the latest edition of the bitter Todd Graham Bowl, the Owls (0-5) continue to struggle on offense while their defense plays well enough to keep the score respectable. My over/under for Rice wins this season continues at two, and that may be a bit optimistic. The Owls host the potent Navy (3-2) triple-option attack next Saturday.
The Texas Longhorns (4-0) were off this weekend before starting the meat of their schedule next week at Colorado (1-3). Following that game, the Horns play in successive weeks 19th-ranked Oklahoma at Dallas, at 24th-ranked Missouri, and at 15th-ranked Oklahoma State.
Capitalism, Whole Foods-style
Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey, who is certainly not a conventional business executive, provides in this Stephen Moore/WSJ interview a compelling counterbalance to Michael Moore’s indictment of a market-based economy:
His odyssey from a long-haired counterculture anticapitalist in the early 1970s to running a company that now has $8 billion in sales and 280 stores—is a remarkable tale in itself. He attended the University of Texas where he studied philosophy and religion. [. . .]
Before I started my business, my political philosophy was that business is evil and government is good. I think I just breathed it in with the culture. Businesses, they’re selfish because they’re trying to make money."
At age 25, John Mackey was mugged by reality. "Once you start meeting a payroll you have a little different attitude about those things." This insight explains why he thinks it’s a shame that so few elected officials have ever run a business. "Most are lawyers," he says, which is why Washington treats companies like cash dispensers.
Mr. Mackey’s latest crusade involves traveling to college campuses across the country, trying to persuade young people that business, profits and capitalism aren’t forces of evil. . . .
Read the entire interview. Providing jobs for communities and creating wealth for investors are good things. It’s unfortunate that more executives such as Mackey aren’t reminding us of that.
Capitalism is Michael Moore’s megaphone
Larry Ribstein, who has written extensively about filmmakers’ generally negative views toward business — zeroes in on the irony of Michael Moore’s new reductionist documentary on the evils of capitalism:
The irony is that many of these films could not reach a wide audience if not for their backing by – yes, capitalists. [. . .]
Capitalism is easy to knock because it produces losers that artists can juxtapose with winners. It gets bad press compared to alternatives like socialism that produces less social wealth but also less envy and resentment. The irony is that some of the biggest winners are also the biggest whiners. Only capitalism enables the dissemination of any ideas that anybody wants to hear. Capitalism gives Michael Moore his megaphone.
It’s almost enough to make me an anti-capitalist.
Compared to What
The incomparable Les McCann and Eddie Harris perform one of their signature hits from their great live album of the early 1970’s.
