Archive - Oct 2007

In 1989, Exxon Valdez jousted with a reef and lost 11 million gallons of crude oil - effectively donating it to the birds, otters, fisherfolk, and others of Prince William Sound. Fortunately, it led to the more regulations on the tankers which has prevented more horrific spills (though the many many small spills in aggregate we never hear about tend to outweigh the massive ones anyway).

Unfortunately, Exxon is still appealing its punishment! It took 5 years to get the decision - $5 billion. Over the years, it has been reduced by half but Exxon is now appealing to the Supreme Court, saying they have paid enough.

This is the largest and most profitable corporation in the world. Though they have cleaned up their act and are not the worst when it comes to environmental irresponsibility (from what I have read, BP is much worse despite their marketing, for instance) they should pay the damn penalty.

Bloggin from the road.

I finally got the nod and am traveling with the Gopher football program. Left for Michigan today - playing the Wolverines in The Big House. Security on the U campus by TSA and a police escort for the 4 buses (2 for the 70 players traveling, one for admin staff, and one for media and the other who get to come - in this case, that includes the Regents).

We drove all around the campus before hopping on 55 and going to the airport. Right out on the Tarmac and on the plane from the bus. Nice.

Short flight, crowded 757. But food, drinks, and flight attendants wearing Gopher gear. Also, a charter flight ... which apparently means you don't have to put your seats and tray tables up. It is a whole different experience.

Sitting in a nice hotel (with a slow wired network - sigh) near the airport. Dinner soon, then perhaps a movie... breakfast tomorrow, football, then flying home immediately. This is pretty exciting, I just hope to get good photos and not lose any gear since I have too many frigging bags between camera stuff and laptop bag and clothes.

Oh yeah, and NO RAIN TOMORROW, please!!! My only outdoor football game to shoot in Div 1, let it be DRY!!!

Yikes. Want to understand evolution?

This is an amazing video that does a great job of explaining how evolution works. I think many people who claim to not "believe" in evolution do not understand what it is - kinda like me not believing in the radio because I can't see the little band inside it. I want to see people watch this and deny it. I'm sure some will, but at a certain point, how do you convince someone that the sky is blue when they refuse to believe it exists?

I guess this could be step one. The next step is forcing them to carry a jar of fruit flies around...

Some highlights from the Macalester v. St. John's men soccer match a few weeks ago. I'm starting to feel good about my skills - I have long known when I have missed good shots and I am now getting many of them. Amazing how long it takes - this is why I shoot as frequently as possible.

Michelle and I are considering buying a new TV and I was looking at Circuit City because I had been tired of dealing with Best Buy and numerous defective products and annoying customer service.

Until daddYman enlightened me about Circuit City's reprehensible h.r. record. Circuit City just fired its longest serving employees to cut costs - 3,400 hundred of them! They wanted to hire new workers at lower wages ... and told the fired employees they could reapply at the low wages after a 10 week period. UNREAL.

So I guess I'll be looking to Best Buy again ... at least for the huge purchases that don't make sense to have mailed to me. For everything else, there is newegg.com - the best store for tech products in my book.

Another stunningly fast weekend is past. Spent most of it looking through the lens - two soccer games, half a football game, and a great wedding on Saturday - congratulations Dave and Erin!

Earlier today, the Gophers defeated Penn State 1-0 in overtime. PSU was ranked no. 8 in the nation and we took them out! It was an incredible game and will be shown again on Monday evening on the Big Ten channel (screw you Comcast for preventing me from seeing it (good Lord, can we get some competition in the cable market already)). Worth checking out.

I've long been amused by those who claim that football is dumb or a game for stupid people. Often, this is argued by avid baseball fans, which is fairly stunning. At any rate, I think football is fairly amazing - and the sport that comes closest to a cross between war and chess.

Coaches are possibly more important in football than in any other sport - coming up with defensive and offensive strategies and play calls. But those on the field have to know what is going on as well.

The defensive players have to read the offensive formation, down count, yards to first down, and compare it to what they have seen this team do in the past (players spend a lot of time watching game tapes from previous weeks). In a deafening environment (many sports photographers and others on the sidelines wear ear plugs), they have to communicate to each other to anticipate the upcoming play and plan their coverage.

Offensive players are reading the defense, but none more so than the vaunted quarterback. Depending on the freedom accorded to them by their coach, they may regularly make changes to the play depending on defensive formation. This passage comes from a Sports Illustrated article covering the play Brett Favre called that gave him the most thrown touchdowns in the history of the NFL (written by Peter King).

Oh yeah, and there is always a clock counting down... this comes 8 seconds before the play clock ticked 00....

As Favre, in the shotgun, prepared to take the snap from center Scott Wells, he looked up and saw two reasons to worry: To Favre's left, linebacker E.J. Henderson was fixing to blitz; and to the quarterback's right, about 10 yards up the field, free safety Dwight Smith was positioned directcly in the line of Jenning's pass route. Favre realized he had to call an audible. But that noise...

"Today was as loud as I've heard a stadium in recent memory," Favre said afterward. "I think we went on silent snap count on all but two plays [all game]." The audible was Y Dragon: Instead of tight end Donald Lee's running 12 yards upfield, which would encourage Smith to clog the middle, Favre, wanted Lee to run a shallow flat route toward the sideline. This would give Jennings, who was split right, single coverage on a quick slant to the post. And the defender covering Jennings would be a rookie nickelback, Marcus McCauley. "I needed a quick-strike play because we probably weren't going to be able to block all they were bringing," Favre said. "Y Dragon was perfect."

At any rate, the article continues and I don't want to copy any more down, but it is stunning the things that go through Favre's head as he runs around to shout at everyone the change and weighs the merits of a time-out but decides not to call it because then the Vikings will change their formation and they will lose this opportunity. He gets the snap off at 01.

I know this will drive my Favre-hater parents nuts, but the guy is damn impressive and I hope the Pack does well this year.

Some people will publish anything, I guess =) I actually wrote this awhile ago and have been waiting for it to come out for awhile. It probably would have had more impact if published when Michigan State was still undefeated, but I hope it still resonates with some.

Comcast & Big Ten looks at Comcast and how it treats Michigan. Companies like Comcast are used to treating customers poorly because they mainly operate as a monopoly. The times are a changin' - but we'll see if the Comcasts of this country can't maintain their business model at the expense of consumer benefit.

I'm rooting for publicly owned infrastructure that allows private companies to compete on top of it - getting rid of natural monopoly and allowing us to choose our service providers based on our preferences rather than our location.

Check out the design contest for the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I just got back from a work trip to Springfield, Illinois. I was invited to debate whether rural broadband infrastructure should be publicly owned or not. My opponent was from a national free market think tank (not Cato).

The conference was great - I learned a lot and made good connections that will be helpful in the future as I continue to research and publicize the benefits of some of these systems. My debate came during the first round of breakout sessions.

It went well enough. Not great. I felt a little schizophrenic at times. I have been reflecting on the event and have figured a number of ways I can improve on delivering my message. My problem is that I feel very confident about explaining public ownership in person to someone in a conversation. I'm not as good at doing it to a room full of people. So, need to work on that.

But on the whole, it was good. A little odd being the youngest person in the room (sometimes by a significant margin) and trying to come off as the expert. So it goes.