What Starts Here Changes the World

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UT Tower_beacon.jpgThe University of Texas is on quite a roll these days, and in more ways that simply its national championship-caliber football team.
UT just rolled out its innovative new advertising campaign, a series of nine 30 second commercials with the theme ìWhat Starts Here Changes the Worldî narrated by former CBS anchoman and UT alum Walter Cronkite. The ads — which were developed by UT’s Office of Public Affairs and the Center for Brand Research in concert with GSD&M Advertising — emphasize how the UT and Austin communities “together forge a dynamic, creative and diverse community that few American cities can match.” UT will use the ads primarily during televised NCAA sporting events, where the networks provide the participating universities some free air time in each such telecast.
My favorite: “Breakfast Tacos.”

What does “Franchione” mean?

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darnell.jpgIt’s no secret in these parts that Texas A&M head football coach Dennis Franchione had a bad season, not something to take lightly in terms of job security in the football-dominated culture of College Station, Texas. So, after Franchione fired his defensive coordinator at the end of the season, the conventional wisdom was that Franchione would hire a big name coach as the new A&M defensive coordinator, particularly given A&M’s willingness to pay top dollar for an assistant coach who would revive the long-dormant Wrecking Crew defense.
Well, suffice it to say that Franchione’s hire — his old friend and oft-fired coach Gary Darnell — is not exactly what most Aggie fans had in mind as the solution to revive the flagging A&M program. Darnell has been out of football entirely the past year after being fired as head coach at Western Michigan. Moreover, Darnell was previously the source of much angst among Texas Longhorn fans when his unaggressive “read and react” defense that he instituted while serving as Longhorn defensive coordinator from 1994-96 was one of the primary reasons that former Longhorn coach John Mackovic was fired after the 1997 season and remains one of the most unpopular Texas football coaches in history. Darnell’s tenure as Texas defensive coordinator included the Horns’ defense giving up over 30 points five times in 1994, as well as such embarrassments as the 55-27 pasting that Notre Dame laid on the Horns in 1995 and the lopsided 38-15 Longhorn defeat to Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl after the 1996 season. Just to put the icing on the cake, Darnell was also the college coach of currently underachieving Houston Texans linebacker Jason Babin, on whom the team wasted a first round draft choice.
Thus, with that backdrop, it was not particularly surprising that I received a phone call yesterday from a friend who is an ardent Longhorn fan. While chortling about Franchione’s hiring of Darnell, he passed along the following :

Q: “What does ‘Franchione’ mean in English?”
A: “Mackovic.”

Early betting on the ConocoPhillips-Burlington Resources deal

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ConocoPhillips2.jpgWell, there has been almost a week’s worth of bets on the proposed ConocoPhillips – Burlington Resources merger, and those bets have been decidedly against ConocoPhillips.
Since Monday, ConocoPhillips shares have been hammered, closing yesterday at $58.77, which is down almost 7% since the proposed merger was announced. Moreover, Houston-based investment bank Sanders Morris Harris and A. G. Edwards both downgraded ConocoPhillips stock to a “hold” from their pre-merger announcement “buy” recommendation. As noted in this earlier post, the ConocoPhillips play for Burlington runs contrary to traditional big energy company policy toward such mergers during times of high energy prices.
Responding to this market skepticism, ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO James Mulva conceded yesterday in public comments that the company is paying “a full price” for Burlington, but that “access to quality long-term resources has become much more difficult and expensive. We are in an extremely competitive environment and a portfolio of assets of Burlington’s quality cannot be replicated.” Mr. Mulva also noted that ConocoPhillips is analyzing whether to use hedges to “either lock in prices or mitigate the potential downside of a reduction in gas prices.” Finally, Mr. Mulva predicted excess cash flow would allow ConocoPhillips to reduce the relatively high debt-to-capital ratio that it is taking on to make the deal to between 18% to 23% by the end of 2006.

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We’re number one!

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We're no 1.gifUnfortunately, I’m not talking about Texas winning the BCS National Football Championship.
Rather, the American Tort Reform Association has named the Texas Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast region as the number one “judicial hell-hole” for 2005. The ATRA describes a judicial hell-hole in the following manner:

Judicial Hellholes are places that have a disproportionately harmful impact on civil litigation. Litigation tourists, guided by their personal injury lawyers, seek out these places because they know they will produce a positive outcome – an excessive verdict or settlement, a favorable precedent, or both.

Hat tip to Walter Olson for the link.

We don’t really want true health insurance

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medical tools.jpgClear Thinkers favorite Arnold Kling has been doing extensive research on health care finance issues over the past couple of years and, as noted in this insightful TCS Daily op-ed, he is coming to the conclusion that one of the main problems with the U.S. health care finance system is that most Americans simply do not want to pay for true health insurance:

What we are left with, then, is that people do not want real health insurance. I would gladly take a health insurance policy with a $10,000 deductible per individual, and I suspect that many of my wise, risk-averse TCS readers would, too. But we are in a tiny minority! Most people do not want to be responsible for the first $10,000 in medical expenses, and most people believe that an insurance policy that is expected to pay no claims 95 percent of the time is a bad deal.

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The extinction of the one-iron

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oneiron_275.jpgI’ve been looking at hybrid golf clubs this holiday season as a possible gift for one of my relatives, so I enjoyed this this Jason Sobol article on the demise of the one-iron, which is one of the most difficult golf clubs to hit well and the reason why the easier-to-hit hybrid clubs are replacing the one-iron in most golfers bags. Sobol notes the late Pulitzer Prize-winning LA Times sportswriter Jim Murray‘s classic lament about the futility of hitting a one-iron:

“The only time I ever took out a 1-iron was to kill a tarantula, and I took a 7 to do that.”

New study links Alzheimer’s to diabetes

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Alzheimer's.jpgA new Brown University Medical School study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease supports a growing body of clinical evidence indicating that Alzheimer’s may be a new form of diabetes. The study found that brain levels of insulin and related cellular receptors fall precipitously during the early stages of Alzheimer’s and that insulin levels continue to drop progressively as the disease becomes more severe. Previous posts on Alzheimer’s-related matters are here.

Spitzer: “But I got him with the strawberries . . .”

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Spitzer44.jpgCapt queeg.jpgDoes anyone else get the sense that NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer is becoming Captain Queeg-like in his pursuit of former American International Group CEO, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg?
The latest revelation in the Lord of Regulation’s relentless campaign against the former AIG executive Greenberg is the serious charge that Greenberg and other former AIG executives cheated the Greenberg-controlled charitable foundation — the Starr Foundation — through “self dealing” in the handling of the estate of AIG founder, Cornelius Vander Starr. Spitzer’s report on the matter contends that Greenberg’s self-dealing deprived the Starr Foundation of assets that “would now be worth more than $6 billion.”
Well now, those are serious charges. But a couple of small details were left out of Spitzer’s typically boisterous media release on the charges. First, the Internal Revenue Service, a New York state court and the New York attorney general’s office had previously approved the transactions that Spitzer now characterizes as improper “self-dealing.” But even more incredibly, Spitzer is complaining of allegedly fraudulent transactions that occurred 35 years ago!

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Roger Clemens, player agent

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ausmus2.jpgThat’s right. In addition to being one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball history, Roger Clemens is now carving out a new career as an unusually effective player agent.
How so, you ask? Well, there is simply no explanation possible other than Clemens’ negotiating skill for the Stros’ decision yesterday to sign the atrocious Brad Ausmus to a two-year, $7.5 million contract. Clemens had previously stated publicly that one of the key factors that he is considering in deciding whether to rejoin the Stros next season is whether the club retains free agent Ausmus, who is Clemens’ favorite catcher. Noting that factor, Stros GM Tim Purpura observed upon signing Ausmus to the contract that “he’s one of those types of players that you can’t really appreciate . . . from the numbers.”

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Overpaying to save gasoline

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Toyota Prius2.jpgThe Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins‘ provocative column from a couple of weeks ago on the economics of the Toyota Prius hybrid automobile prompted a considerable amount of criticism from Prius owners, all of whom seem to be quite pleased with their decision to buy the vehicle. In response to that reaction, Mr. Jenkins pens this column ($) in today’s WSJ in which he defends his position that it does not make economic sense to overpay to save gasoline, but concedes that there are good reasons to buy a Prius:

Several Prius partisans emailed to say they purchased their cars not to save money but to save the earth, or at least make a statement about doing so. That’s a perfectly good reason to buy a car (as is wanting to meet girls). However, we doubt their Hollywood coreligionists would be so keen on solidarity if it meant driving around town in a Ford Fiesta.