The latest in our continuing series of creative commercials.
Dress for the moment
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Monthly Archives: April 2011
Why art is important
Legendary director Warner Herzog reminds us of the importance of art in his latest film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The trailer for the film and a Scientific American interview of Herzog are below. The NY Times review is here.
Warren Buffett, self-preservationist
Professor Bainbridge surmises that Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett threw David Sokol under the bus in connection with the Berkshire audit committee report on Sokol’s front-running stock purchases, which may be the subject of criminal investigations at this point. Frankly, the Professor makes a good case.
However, no one should be surprised if that was Buffett’s purpose. As noted here, here and here, there is certainly precedent for Buffett offering up sacrificial lambs to protect himself and Berkshire. That precedent certainly had consequences for the ones who were fingered, too.
Meanwhile, Jeff Skilling remains living in a Colorado prison under the cloud of a 25-year prison sentence, partly because he was unwilling to emulate Buffett’s behavior.
Neither Warren Buffett nor David Sokol is a criminal. But neither is Jeff Skilling. What is criminal is a system that offers perverse incentives for risk-takers who generate jobs and wealth to finger others to protect themselves from the government’s arbitrary exercise of its prosecutorial power.
Bruce Schneier on security theater
Milo Hamilton reflects the sorry state of the Stros
You know, Stros radio announcer Milo Hamilton was never in the same league as Gene Elston as a play-by-play man. But I always thought Hamilton knew something about baseball. Heck, he’s been around it for over 50 years.
“I want to know, if a guy gave you $85 million, and that’s what Drayton did in the last contract…and he said, ‘This is your team,’ and he said that…wasn’t in his persona, to be a leader. Yet last night, Tony LaRussa – when asked about Berkman – ‘He’s now the leader on this team, he is the inspiration to the older players, he goes around an inspires the younger players,” and he got in excellent shape by hiring a trainer. If he had done that the last couple of years that he was here, guys, he could have finished out a really fine career in Houston if he had given it that same dedication. I just want a simple answer – why did you think it wasn’t necessary to get in shape your last couple of years as an Astro, but now for team you didn’t even know, a manager you never played for, you felt it was your responsibility to get in great shape?…Lance, I love ya. You’ve got a great family, you’re one of the greatest ministers in all of sports…but wouldn’t it have been great to have given it that same dedication to the Astros and the owner here that you did in two short months for the Cardinals?”
It is indisputable that Lance Berkman is the second-best hitter in the history of the Houston Astros, behind only Jeff Bagwell. Given that Hamilton’s criticism is over Berkman’s last few seasons with the Stros, let’s focus on those.
He was injured in 2010 (bad knee) and had his first bad season of his 13-year MLB career. But I am aware of no evidence that Berkman could have done anything from a conditioning standpoint that would have prevented or lessened the impact of that injury.
By his standards, Berkman didn’t have a stellar 2009 season, either (31 runs created over league average/.399 OBA/.509 SLG/.907 OPS/25 HR/80 RBI in 136 games). However, that production was far better than any other Stros hitter that season. And in most other non-Bagwell seasons, for that matter.
And in the 2008 season, Berkman had one of the best seasons of any hitter in the history of the Stros (58 RCAA/.420 OBA/.567 SLG/.986 OPS/29 HR/106 RBI/116 R/99 BB/18-22 SB).
And let’s not forget that Berkman is by far the best hitter in Stros history in post-regular season play.
For that, Berkman gets trashed by his former’s club’s most well-known media representative.
Meanwhile, Hamilton continues to ignore the undeniable fact that Stros management mismanaged the once-strong Stros farm system for a decade after Berkman came up the MLB club. That management incompetence virtually ensured that Berkman would play out the final years of his Stros career on horrible baseball teams.
And let’s not even get started on Hamilton’s silence in regard to the grossly overpaid Carlos Lee, who Joe Posnanski deemed to be the worst everyday MLB player last season.
Finally, why hasn’t Hamilton said anything about the Stros’ disingenuous Craig Biggio Farewell Tour?
So, there you have it. The Stros are currently tied for the second-worst record (8-14) in MLB, which is frightening in that the team has actually over-performed (at least in terms of hitting) so far this season. There is essentially no rational hope that the club will win much more than 70 games, if that. The primary attractions that the club is touting at the ballpark this season are the new video screen (it’s really big!) and Brian Caswell-inspired food (don’t bother, it’s still mostly Aramark).
And Milo Hamilton is criticizing Lance Berkman?
The sad reality is that Milo Hamilton reflects what’s wrong with the Stros, not Lance Berkman.
The sale of the Stros cannot happen fast enough in this 25+ year field level ticketholder’s book.
Expensive Toy Trains
Cory Crow posted a good overview this past Friday on how Houston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has failed to develop and operate a transit system that meets the special needs of the Houston metropolitan area (Metro’s debacles have been frequent topics on this blog, most recently the here and here).
Cory’s post coincided with this Richard White/NY Times op-ed in which he previews one of the themes of his new book on the financing and construction of the the 19th-century transcontinental railroads – that governmental guaranty of the bonds used to finance the construction meant that “if there be profit, the [private] corporations may take it; if there be loss, the government must bear it.” As White notes, that dynamic is again at play with regard to the Obama Administration’s high-speed rail proposals:
Proponents of the transcontinental railroads promised all kinds of benefits they did not deliver. They claimed that the railroads were needed to save the Union, but the Union was already saved before the first line was completed. The best Western farmlands would have been settled without the railroads; their impact on other lands was often environmentally disastrous. For three decades California commodities could move more cheaply, and virtually as quickly, by sea. The subsidies the railroads received enriched contractors and financiers, but nearly all the railroads went into receivership, some multiple times; the government rescued others.
As more astute members of Congress came to recognize, the subsidies were a mistake. . . .
After 1872, the country turned against the subsidizing of large corporations. It was a little late. Fraud and failure left a legacy that would lead to four decades of government attempts to get back what had so carelessly been given away. In the 1890s, Congress was still trying to recover money from the Pacific Railway.
Yet here we are again. The Obama administration proposed a substantial subsidy, $53 billion over six years, to induce investors to take on risk that they are otherwise unwilling to assume. Such subsidies create what the economist Robert Fogel has called “hothouse capitalism”: government assumes much of the risk, while private contractors and financiers take the profit.
The reality is that virtually all light rail systems and most high-speed rail systems are unsustainable without massive federal subsidies, which are hit and miss, at best. Besides, the financial benefit of these rail systems are highly concentrated in only a few interest groups. Unfortunately, those groups do not include one that is comprised of a substantial number of users.
A strategy of "build as much light rail as possible now and then figure out how to pay for it later" is not a coherent transit plan for the Houston metropolitan area.
What is it going to take for Houston’s local governmental leaders to understand that?
Sweet Baby James
James Taylor from 1970:
And from recently, with a nice explanation of how the song came about:
Drunken Poet’s Dream
Clear Thinkers favorite Hayes Carll and Ray Wylie Hubbard on Austin City Limits:
Lone Star
The Quantum Story
Jim Baggott talks about his new book on the history of the quantum revolution.