Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Opinion

  • Hi. I em Inga from Sveeden!

    Christmas is over, thankfully.  Which means December’s theme of our thought experiment on Christmas movies must be over right?

    Right?

    This in my review of Weihenstephaner Korbinian Double Bock.

    The problem with Christmas movies is a lot of people make the mistake of assuming a movie is a Christmas movie simply because it takes place during the Christmas season.  Which is how we get articles such as these explaining why Lethal Weapon is a Christmas movie now.  There is nothing wrong with watching it in order to celebrate your preferred winter solstice holiday, however I personally don’t think it is a holiday movie.  The article’s author seems to focus on red imagery in the background, like fire trucks, clothing, and Rigg’s red ear protection at the shooting range (they aren’t headphones…way to journo there journo-person).  All of which seems coincidental if anything.  Rigg’s suicidal tendencies and reckless behavior aren’t driven by Christmas either, they’re driven by him being a widower and PTSD from Vietnam.  Anybody spending any meaningful time around combat Vets knows they contemplate suicide on any given day, triggered by even the most innocuous of things…Finally, the time of year is not integral to the plot the way it is in Die Hard.

    Similar to how Trading Places is not a Christmas movie.  I would however argue it is a New Years movie, primarily because New Years is supposed to be a time of self-reflection and new beginnings.  Something every character experiences in this film.

    In this classic comedy we find Randolph and Mortimer Duke, two multi-millionaire owners of a Philadelphia based commodity exchange, who constantly get into petty squabbles between each other. This one in particular is a Nature vs. Nurture (pardon the shaky cam) argument, where they propose a practical experiment with a small wager.  They take one of their employees, Louis Winthorpe (Dan Akroyd) and switch his place in the world by ruining his life.  They find a reason to fire him to take away his livelihood, evict him from his Duke brother-owned home, frame him as a petty thief at his gentleman’s club to take away his social circle, and frame him for drug possession which leads to an arrest with the kicker of sending a hooker (Jamie Lee Curtis) to pick him up from jail when his fiancée arrives to bail him out.  His life is ruined in short order, and the hooker, Ophelia, is the only person willing to assist him. In exchange, they find Billy Rae Valentine (Eddie Murphy), a street hustler/con-artist whom the Duke’s met previously.  They hire him, give him basic instructions on how to do Winthorpe’s job, and give him Winthorpe’s old home.  Both men know nothing of the experiment, nor do they know anything other than their own experiences at opposing ends of the social hierarchy.

    The result?  Valentine makes the Dukes a fair payday with his reasoning for setting the price on pork belly and impresses them with his diligence and eagerness to learn, while Winthorpe attempts to frame Valentine for drug use at the Duke’s Christmas party.  Neither man however is truly changed as Winthorpe steals, of all things, a smoked salmon (these are not cheap) from the party, and Valentine pockets a joint from Winthorpe’s stash.

    Valentine overhears the Dukes discussing their experiment.  Where they effectively ruin one privileged man’s life turning him into a petty criminal, and turn an unprivileged man’s life of destitute into one of prosperity—within a few weeks time.  People are essentially products of their environment, and the Duke brothers agree success has little to do with pedigree.  The Dukes decide they have little use for either man, plan to eventually fire Valentine, and leave Winthorpe in his personal Hell.  They settle their wager of…

    …$1.

    Valentine informs Winthorpe of the plot, and with the aid of Ophelia and Winthorpe’s old butler they plot revenge on the Dukes.  They learn the Dukes are expecting a report on that year’s orange harvest and with that information plan to adjust their investments to corner the market on orange futures ahead of the report’s release.  They also learn the report is on a train to New York with the Duke’s associate on New Year’s Eve.  They subdue the associate, and replace the real report with a fake one.

    Then they go to the New York Stock Exchange with the report in hand and short orange commodity futures ahead of the report’s release.  The Dukes on the other hand with the false report took the opposite approach, purchased orange futures with the expectations prices will rise and were ruined in the process.  After the market closed, Winthorpe and Valentine make a scene on the trading floor mocking the Dukes by settling a bet they can get rich making two really rich guys poor, in the amount of…

    …$1.

    ::Insert STEVE SMITH joke here. By insert, mean…ah, screw it::

    Can this movie be made again?  Not without insufferable social commentary at every corner.  If somebody makes this again, they have an obvious analogue with the Dukes being the Koch brothers.  They have an obvious place to add in soliloquies on privilege, capitalism, Al Franken, race, poverty, feminism, the N-word, butlers, illicit drug use, operas, suicide, manicures, sex workers, black markets, blackface, on-screen nudity, and being raped by a gorilla.

    Yeah…about that last part.  The funniest parts of this movie are on the train on New Years Eve, and is almost entirely humor playing on racial and ethnic stereotypes.  Not to mention a man being raped by a gorilla.  I refuse to speculate on how they can update this movie, because I refuse to give idiots stupid ideas.

    They don’t need my help.

     

    This beer is not Swedish, but we all knew that.  It is a Doppelbock which is a dark German lager.  It is rather nice and made in the manner which we all expect from people that are not Swedish.  This is a family friendly site, so I am afraid this is the best I can do.

    Happy New Year.  Weihenstephaner Korbinian Double Bock:  3.8/5

  • What Are We Reading – December 2019

    SugarFree

    I enjoyed Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction, Grady Hendrix’s romp through the post-Stephen King boom in horror publishing. I’m consumed quite a bit of horror from this era and I still found quite a few books–bizarre, deranged, amazing books– that I want to read.

    For example, here is Hendrix describing Toy Cemetary, by William C. Johnstone:

    Toy Cemetery (1987) achieves maximum Johnstone. Vietnam vet Jay Clute returns to Victory, Missouri, where he grew up, with nine-year-old daughter Kelly in tow. Within hours of his arrival, Jay discovers that the two major local landmarks are (1) an enormous doll factory in the center of town run by an obese pedophile named Bruno Dixon, who films satanic kiddie porn in it, and (2) a high-security hospital/mental institution/underground research facility that houses the “products of incest,” enormous man-monsters with apple-sized heads and superhuman strength. Tiny toys run amok, as does incest. Jay and his daughter almost hook up their first night, only to snap out of it when the crosses they’re wearing clink together.

    Reading this book is like driving through a dust storm while in a post-concussion haze: the harder you try to focus, the more everything slips away into an insanity vortex. A supermarket check-out girl’s head explodes, but no one seems to mind. Possessed teenage boys follow Kelly through town, waggling their inappropriate boners until she fights them with karate and kills one with an ax. Everyone has a secret doll collection. A tiny French general leads a toy army.

    Johnstone piles incident on incident, trope on trope, and if something isn’t working he keeps on piling. When time itself needs to be brought to a screeching halt, Jay Clute just pulls out his gun and shoots a clock. Because clocks make time, right? In William W. Johnstone’s world, why not?

    Who could possibly resist?

    OMWC

    Partway through painful progress on Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals by Richard Feynman and Albert Hibbs. At one time, this would have been light reading for me… in any case, this is a much deeper dive into the basic concepts outlined in Volume 3 of the Feynman Lectures at a math level that’s challenging but not impenetrable. Feynman basically disassembled the foundations of quantum theory and recast it in a novel approach to least-action and uses this method to attack the classical problems in quantum theory (e.g., harmonic oscillators, many-body, perturbation theory) in literally a more dynamic fashion than the basic Heisenberg/Schroedinger/Dirac approaches I was taught.

    Yes, I’m a geek.

    SP

    I’ve been reading more escapist books. This month it’s been the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. Ruth is a forensic archaeologist in Norfolk, England, who is sometimes brought in by the local police to lend her expertise when bones crop up in various places and situations. One of her best friends is a practicing Druid. Good, light reading.

    Brett L

    I haven’t read a damn thing worth a damn this month. Limitless Lands is probably the best of a bad bunch on Kindle Unlimited. I’m coming out of the closet, I’m kind of a Lit-RPG fan. Anyhow, I like the character and the writing of this one. A little military worshipful for me, and the character somehow joins a faction that is basically the Roman Empire if it had outlawed slavery and other brutal practices.

    Jesse.in.mb

    The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith. A light read, pretty perfect for a flight and killing time while I can’t sleep on CET. Some of the plots go unresolved, but nothing too egregious.

    JW

    I feel like I’ve graduated. This morning, I read the back of an oatmeal box. Did you know that Quakers had buckles on their shoes?

  • Buffalo Gal Won’t You Come Out Tonight?

    Continuing with our epic journey through the war on Christmas; the last Christmas movie I think needs to be discussed is the Jimmy Stewart classic, Its a Wonderful Life.

    This is my review of Guinness Over the Moon Milk Stout

    In this movie we find the protagonist, George Bailey takes over the family business, a small Savings and Loan in his hometown of Bedford Falls.  We learn a lot about George personally in the beginning of the movie:  Why he was deferred from serving in World War 2, how he met his wife, and his overall outlook on matters related to his family business.  We find out fairly early in the movie about, Mr. Potter, the antagonist as well.  Mr. Potter is major a shareholder in the Savings and Loan.  He voices his opinion during a board meeting regarding the “rabble” in the town that triggers George.  The idea that people should save before trying to purchase a home is apparently evil and issuing sub-prime loans to workers that may or may not be able to afford to pay back the loan is as pure as the driven snow.

    We find out later, during the depression both men were the only ones in town with businesses that survived.  For the most part, Potter is portrayed as a caricature of a greedy, monocle twirling capitalist.  I might even go so far as to say he probably fits in around here.  Eventually, Potter discovers somehow Bailey’s Savings and Loan is still afloat in spite of questionable lending practices and alarming issues with his book keeping, but is the only real competition Potter has.  That is, if you want to define Bailey as a competitor…after all, Potter is a member of the board.  So he tried to do the sensible thing, and buy out Bailey.

    Later Bailey’s uncle, Billy, loses a large deposit which is seriously troubling because it is potentially ruinous to their business.  It is also a seemingly small amount for a mortgage lender of only $8000 (~$110,000 today), and he is depositing it in Potter’s bank (really?).  Bailey then goes to the only person in town that can save him—Potter.  It is here that Potter learns the $8000 in cash he randomly found in his bank earlier that day was Bailey’s.  For better or worse, he tells Bailey to pound sand.

    Bailey falls into a drunken depression, and considers suicide but is sidetracked by a stranger, whom he saves from his own death in an icy river.  Remember–Bailey is not a shady businessman and is supposed to be the good guy.  This random stranger is an angel (in training) named Clarence, that shows Bailey what the world is like without Bailey.  People he saved by telling the pharmacist he filled the prescription with the wrong drug, pulling his brother from the ice in a frozen lake, who goes on to save other servicemen in the war, etc, is the impact Bailey made.  This part in itself actually is a good message:  one person (all of us, really) can impact the world in a variety of ways, with an infinite number of possibilities—it is up to you to make that impact positive.

    Hopefully your impact is not crashing the economy through sub-prime lending.

    Can this movie be made again today?  I am here to tell you, if this movie is made again today it will be labeled by right leaning media as socialist or anti-capitalist propaganda–because it already is.  Every speech Bailey makes, including the times he needs to weasel his way out of satisfying his customers is a smear on Potter.  While Potter may be a cold-hearted businessman, portraying him as a villain is unfair.  Others previously made a similar argument in pointing out that Potter is the only honest businessman in this story.  His frequent complaints about the savings and loan can be argued are in his interests as an investor; how he insisted on customers having adequate collateral before approving loans supports this point.  Even offering to buy out a large percentage (50%) of customer accounts when Bailey was unable to cash out his customers and offer full payment in 60 days, does not lend itself to the idea Potter is a villian.  The only real crime Potter did was keep the money, but even there he comes across it by accident and only learns who left it in the scene where Bailey asks him for a bailout.  He didn’t intentionally steal it.  Given the issues Bailey has caused Potter over the years, is keeping that part a secret in that moment as unethical as it sounds?  Is calling the banking authorities unethical, when bailing out Bailey would make him complicit in the scheme?  He could have easily had a change of heart and deposited the money into Bailey’s account the next day, but we will never know.

    Bailey’s business model is selling subprime loans; 2008 is still in the memories of many today. Which means neither of the characters can be reasonably portrayed as a protagonist.  The honest businessman is a greedy capitalist who wants to own the entire town, and the other is a grifter selling loans to people that cannot afford to pay them back.  In this theoretical new version will Bailey see all the people he gave loans to are living in a rental home or an apartment and not in bankruptcy had he never been born?  So he has a change of heart and goes back to the universe where he likely ruins the entire town (Potter included) when those mortgages default?

    Because why the hell not?

    Clarence is gone, unless he’s replaced by a wizard of some kind, played by Oprah Winfrey. According to lore, they thought the movie was too religious…in 1946, which is why they went with singing Auld Lang Syne instead of an actual Christmas song in the final scene.  Plus, there are feminist complaints when they show what happens to Bailey’s wife had George never been born (old maid).  Bailey’s wife will necessarily have to be more successful as a single woman for whatever reason they want to come up with.  Bailey is just holding her back by marrying her and letting him focus on his career.

    This movie cannot be made again.

     

    Didn’t I already review this one?  Sort of.  This is similar but not quite identical to a Guinness varietal that I found at the Dublin airport and packed away to save for the end of my self-imposed temperance.  This is a little more like the Extra Stout made in Canada and imported to the US, but it is not as harsh with the burned malt flavors.  It splits the difference between those two but it is otherwise solid.  Then there is the part where it is brewed in Baltimore.  Just do what I did and pour it through a colander, into another vessel to make sure there are no empty .40 S&W cartridges, syringes, or shards of broken glass.  You should be good to go.  Guinness Over the Moon Milk Stout 3.5/5

  • The Canonical Top Ten List of 2019

    1. Secret Glib Cabin in the Woods is best cabin in the woods.  Didn’t even get raped and killed in it.
    2. Glib Community When Life Goes to Shit is best online community when life goes to shit.  We’ve seen people deal with death, mental decline of loved ones, unexpected unemployment, and Leap having to deal with the recognition that his spawn is ‘special needs’.  For my part, I wouldn’t trade you for all the used sex robots in Texas.
    3. Animal is Best Column Writer in 2019.  Lots of good ones, but these stuck out because his youth of “fucking around in the woods” and “wearing boots” reminded me of my youth, which involved a lot of “fucking around in the woods” and “wearing boots”.  That zany one about poisoning soldiers is pretty good too.
    4. Yoats is Best Word I Can’t Believe I Use With A Straight Face.
    5. Tulsi Gabbard Apologist is Best Tulsi Gabbard Meme.  Much better than “you just like her because she is pretty” meme.
    6. Leon is Best Glib I Find Myself Agreeing A Lot.  Sorry Pat.  Try harder in 2020.
    7. My Hero Academia / Boku no Hīrō Akademia is Best Anime to Watch with a 10 year old.  Just beats out Yakitate!! Japan but lets be honest, it would be improved with more afro-related subplots.
    8. The Number 6.
    9. Home Made Fermented Hotsauce is Best Hotsauce.  Even if this batch wasn’t hot.  Thanks for the peppers 4score.
    10. How the Fuck Did I Become a Teetotaler is Worst Revelation.  How the fuck did that happen?  I think I had three drinks this year.

  • A Ranking of Ryes, Round 1

    Welcome to another edition of “Not Adahn Gets Drunk at the Keyboard.”  This will be the first in a series of rye reviews, primarily because I like the spirit and my LLS has and entire wall dedicated to this once side-eyed drink.  Rye whiskey has always been probably the best value in the brown liquor market, with prices being cheap and the quality almost never dropping below “drinkable.”  Now with it becoming popular, the magic of the market has resulted in ryes selling for Scotch prices (looking at you, Whistle Pig) which is something I just have a psychological block against paying.   So I’m not going to.  Fortunately, I can fill out a number of these while spending less than $40 a bottle.  I’m limiting myself to four at a time due to palate fatigue.  As is typical for my tasting protocol, I’ve got distilled water to open up the high-proof offerings, as well as taste modifiers of bread, butter, cheese, chocolate and salted almonds.

    Tonight’s Contenders. Also, notice that although the Pixel has excellent resolution, it is absolute ass at color reproduction.

    Old Overholt Straight Rye Whiskey– Nose is sweet, spicy, a bit cardboardy.  It anesthetizes fairly quickly, so I’ll take it away from my nose for a bit before drinking.  Taste is mild, woody, gentle, dangerously drinkable.  And this was sub-$20.  God bless rye whiskey!

    Jim Beam Rye – I’m rather looking forward to this one.  I was very fond of the old yellow labelled version, as it was the first whiskey that I thought tasted good at body temperature poured out of a steel flask at a football game.  I haven’t tried this new green labelled “pre-prohibition style” whatever that’s supposed to mean.  The nose is much drier than the earlier one.  You can smell the barrels, but other than that, it fairly clean.  Oh that’s nice.  It’s sharper, very much in the Beam idiom of sweet carmel and a big hit of char extracts.  Now that I think about it, those are probably carcinogenic AF.  I need to dig out some carbotrap tubes and run this on the GC-MS at work to see exactly how bad this is for you.  I still like it.  I will admit that there may be some emotional attachment to the brand going on, as it played a notable role in my college years.  My fraternity brothers have long been excellent bullshitters, with stories being so good that they became believed and passed down as fact to the next class.  One of these stories was of “Brother Beam.”  Proof that Jim Beam was a member of our house was demonstrated by the color of the bottle labels (black, white, yellow) and the fact that if you were lying on the floor paralyzed by alcohol and saw a Jim Beam bottle lying near you, the ribbon and wax seal logo kinda sorta looked like our badge.  I typically dilute anything over 80 proof, though I don’t think this needs it.  I’ll do so anyway for consistency’s sake.  A few drops does increase the spice to sweet ratio, and oddly enough makes it a little astringent.  I don’t think I like it any better that way. A little fat on the tongue (from a really good cheddar in this case) also tones down the sweetness.

    Bulleit Rye – The Elon Musk of the spirit world, this rye thinks it’s better than everyone else having a cork rather than a screw cap.  Well lah-dee-dah Mr. Fancy-pants.  I keed.  I’ve also never had this one, though I do like their “Bourbon.”  I may have poured the two previous glasses a little too full, there are numb regions on my tongue I’ll need to taste around.  OK, I don’t know if it’s me or it, but this thing has very little smell.  It’s the whiskey, because it sure has a flavor.  And that flavor is impressive.  I”m not quite certain where to begin since it caught me completely by surprise.  Let’s have another taste and I’ll try to pay closer attention.  Ok, I’m not even sure this is rye.  There are tremendous herbal flavors, green fruits, if it wasn’t for the primal flavor you could believe this was a white wine.  But you know, still tasting like whiskey.  Yeah, I’m tempted to disqualify this from the rankings for being out of genre, but holy hell this is an impressive spirit.  How strong is this… 90 proof?  Ok, a few mLs of water it is.  Very interesting – adding water increased the nose.  I’m getting… chocolate? Yeah, chocolate, and burnt oil, concord grapes and citrus peel.  This smells really good.  The flavor unfortunately, instead of being transformed the way most whiskeys are, was merely diluted.  Still, if you wanted to spend time in a bar just smelling your drink, get this and dribble a little water into it.  Can Mormons do that?  I’m pretty sure Baptists can’t since their rules are only elaborations of the first rule which is to Have No Fun that is not The Lord.  Yeah, I should have a bottle of this in the house at all times.

    Rittenhouse Rye Bottled-In-Bond – I adore old cookbooks.  I have in my possession a 1940 booklet of an advertisement purporting to be a reference manual put out by the National Distillers Products Corporation which goes into great length about how “Bottled-in-bond” is the assurance of the highest quality American whiskey.  In fact, on page 6 is notes that “Such whiskey meets all the standards for medicinal whiskey as set forth in the United Stated Pharmacopoeia.”  Relevant to this particular post, it also calls Old Overholt the “greatest of all Pennsylvania ryes.”  It further notes that “The Scotch always omit the ‘e’ used in the American spelling of ‘whiskey’.”  Obviously, such a handbook is to be taken quite seriously, so I look forward to this rye which is produced under regulations which are “the most stringent in the world.”  If you’ve paid attention to the pictures, you noticed that this one was darker in color, which makes sense as it was diluted less than the others prior to bottling (oh, for those of you without access to The Host’s Handbook, bottled-in-bond whiskey is always 100 proof).  Before I smell this one, I’ll need to wash the 80-year-old-book smell from many hands.  Having done so, the aroma of this whiskey is more on the bass side of bourbon, with blackberries mixed in with caramel and maple.  The first sip, neat:  yummy.  Compact, warming, a little sharp, a little… dare I say medicinal?  With cheese:  rounder, less distinctive. Now, taking it to ~80 proof with distilled water:  It’s like an entire circus of charred-cask clowns has gone berserk in my mouth.  Holy fuck, there’s “opening up” and then there’s “a porcupine on acid looking at a Klein bottle made of Mobius strips.”  The transformation is total and absolute.  With respect to the National Distillers Products Corporation, this Pennsylvania rye kicks the everloving shit out of Old Overholt.  It is with a heavy heart that I must concede that the U.S. Government has had a hand in producing something great here.  I would turn in my Libertarian card, but I never got one.

    Same order as above. Not much difference, but then again Rye isn’t all about being a special snowflake.

    I titled this a ranking, so I guess I have to pick a winner:

    Honorable Mention:  Bulleit Rye – This is fantastic stuff, but too atypical to continue on to to the next round.  I’m still drinking the fuck out of it.

    Best Value Whiskey:  Old Overholt – this is a legitimately good whiskey, and it’s cheaper than Jack.

    Winner of Round 1:  Rittenhouse Rye Bottled-In-Bond.  This shakes my confidence in FedGov turning everything it touches into crap.  That’s how good this is.

     

  • Relegation/Promotion in Baseball

    Revolution

    In 1988, in his last Abstract, Bill James wrote an essay called “Revolution”.  I would link to it, but our copyright laws mean that a 31 year old essay is not yet in the public domain, nor never will be.  In it, James suggested freeing the minor leagues from their farm status and having them compete as independent leagues.  Some would accept their levels as minor leagues, some would try to build up and from a 3rd major league, some would fold.  It would allow more teams to exist as every town could have a team and compete at their proper level, with proper levels of pay (none to very little).   There was a lot of good stuff in the article but when I was reading it, in April 1988, I was struck by what he left out…relegation and promotion.  There was no way for a team not in the majors to get there, other than expansion.  It was the obvious flaw in the article.  It is one I have been thinking about ever since, and despite tinkering around, my solution keeps coming back to the same one I thought of 31 years ago.

    Ignoring the relegation/promotion question for now, why would we want free minor leagues?  Have you been to a minor league game?  The decision making is less than spectacular, but it is because the managers literally aren’t playing to win.  They are rewarded for developing players, not winning games.  If that means playing Joey Votto in left field instead of 1B, because the Reds don’t have an opening at first, then so be it (this is not a hypothetical.  And yes, he was a far worse outfielder than you can possibly imagine).   Your AAA team has made the playoffs?  Great, we will call your best player up to the majors so he can pinch hit once a week in September.

    There is no real rooting for your home team.  At best, if you are a fan of their affiliated major league team, you get to see players that you will be cheering for later one.  As a Reds fan and Cardinals hater, when Louisville was a Cards franchise, I had trouble cheering for my local team.  Fortunately, they switched to the Reds (with a brief detour thru Milwaukee).  If the teams were independent, they would be playing to win.  And attendance would go up, not down, in the post season.

    I get up, I get down

    For those not fans of European sports, what is relegation and promotion?  I will use English soccer as my example, as it is the best known to American, but I am sure Pie can fill us in on how it works differently in Romania.   At the end of the season, the worst teams from one league are relegated down to the next lowest league, and the best teams from that league come up.  For example, the bottom 3 (18th thru 20th) in the English Premier League are relegated to the Championship League, and the top 3 (actually top 2, plus a playoff winner of teams 3-6) are promoted from the Championship to the Premier League.  Below the Championship is League 1 and League 2.  Below them is the National Conference, and then it starts getting interesting.  At that point, instead of a straight 1 to 1 correspondence, we get branching, as the leagues form “The Pyramid”.  Below the Conference is Conference North and South.  Below them are 3 leagues, Northern, Southern, and Isthmian.  And below them are more and more branches.  At the lowest levels you get county leagues.  Its just neighborhood teams playing against each other, with better ones moving up and playing against the other better teams.  Think of it as like A-league vs B-league softball.

    If you really care, here is a nice image:

    https://englishsoccerguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/english_league_pyramid.gif

    Centerfield

    Now that we are all on board, what would the American system look like.  First, we have to accept that 1969-1976 had the correct setup for MLB.  Each league had 12 teams, divided into 6 eastern and 6 western teams, with 18 games played in division and 12 played out of division with no interleague play.

    Perfection!  Then it all got screwed up by letting Toronto in the AL.

    While we can’t go back, we can replicate that.  We will expand the majors by 18 teams, and form two levels of 24 teams.  The Major Leagues D1 will have 4 6-team divisions:  NL-East, NL-West, AL-East, AL-West playing the schedule they did in the 70s.  Major League D2 will also have 4 6-team divisions, but will save on travel costs.  There will be two leagues, the Eastern League and the Western League, each with a National and American division.  They will play the same 18-12 breakdown, but wont cross over to the other half of the country.

    Sixth place in each D1 division will be relegated to the appropriate division in D2.  The winners of divisions in D2 will move up.  Below is my initial layout.  I chose the 18 teams from current minor league baseball (17 of the 18 are in AAA) based on 2019 attendance and not being located within the DMA of a major league team.  The 6 MLB teams in D2 were based on geography and 2019 records.  For assigning minor league teams to National or American, I mostly went with their historical affiliations with some adjustments for balance.  Its just an example.  The west starts at Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and the UP.  And whatever that is in Canada – Albertoba or something.

    Here is your 2020 breakdown:

     

    NL-East NL-West AL-East AL-West
    Atlanta St Louis NY Yankees Minnesota
    Washington Milwaukee Tampa Bay Houston
    NY Mets Chi Cubs Boston Oakland
    Philadelphia LA Dodgers Cleveland Texas
    Cincinnati Arizona Toronto Chicago WS
    Pittsburgh San Fran Baltimore LA Angels
    EL-National WL-National EL-American WL-American
    Miami Colorado Detroit Kansas City
    Louisville San Diego Toledo Seattle
    Indianapolis Iowa Columbus Round Rock
    Durham Sacramento Charlotte Las Vegas
    Buffalo Paso Rochester Salt Lake City
    Scranton Albany Nashville Oklahoma City

     

     

    American Pyramid

    That is a start of the system, we could keep the rest of the minors around as farm teams, instead of each MLB team having about 6, each of the 48 would have 3.  But once we go down this path, this won’t last.  There will be more expansion off the bottom of this, We will start the American Baseball Pyramid.  I don’t know exactly how it would develop, but I think it would start with 4 regional leagues, Northeast, Southeast, Central, and West Coast.  Maybe 5, with a Midwest league also, Yeah, probably so.  I don’t know how they would decide the 4 to promote, so maybe it would be 4.  But whatever, you get the idea.  And below that would be 8 or so leagues, and below that state level leagues.  Below that city level leagues, where neighborhoods play against neighborhoods – probably much shorter seasons with a game or two thru the week and then weekend games on Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

    This would give a place for that guy you played little league with, who was a AAA all-star and then spent 2 weeks in the Majors with an ERA over 10, a place to continue to play (this is also not a hypothetical).  Now, there are two types of guys in the minors, young kids who have potential to be major leagues, and guys kept around because they help the young guys learn and may be a coach someday.  As soon as you lose that prospect status, you are generally out the door.  They don’t want a 32 year old at A ball.  But with an independent system, if that 32 year old can help the A league team win and get promoted, he is worth having around.  And they will still develop the 19 year old, so they can sell him to a Major League team and rake in the profits.

     

    Money

    So why hasn’t this already happened?  It might have in the 19th century.  It would have prevented all the failed competing major league attempts, like the Players League and the Federal League and the American League.  The PCL was very close to a 3rd major league and might have become one if the Dodgers and Giants hadn’t moved west.  There were a few players who refused Major League contracts to stay in the PCL.

    Now it won’t happen for the obvious reason:  $$$.  I team dropping to MLB-D2, or even lower, would lose out on lots of money.  With the cost of a team, owners can put up with being bad, they can’t put up with being in a lower league.  And the second monetary reason is leverage.  Although expansion has put a stop to most of it, teams can get shiny new stadiums out of cities by threatening to leave.  Get Las Vegas a D2 team and the threat goes away.  Vegas isn’t going to try to become the new home of the Twins, they can just spend money on players and get promoted.

    The system seems great to libertarians, the best 24 franchises will rise to the top and bad owners will watch their teams fall.  Good fan bases will support their team, providing the money for teams to rise to their appropriate level and stay there.  Bad fan bases will get what they deserve.  And we can also see why crony capitalist wouldn’t like it.

    So yet again, I end an article with a section on why my awesome idea isn’t feasible.

  • Nobody Wants a Charlie in the Box

    It’s the time of year again, when all those old holiday movies start showing up in the streaming service, or if you are a boomer, on TV.  Sadly, most of these movies can be argued are products of their time.

    Or are they?

    For the month of December I asked for assistance from TPTB to put together a coherent string of random thoughts, take a few bong hits postulate which of the classic Christmas movies can actually be made today.

    This is my review of Campanology Brewing Chocolate Babka Stout

    Today, we look at Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  This stop motion animated classic begins with the narrator, a snowman voiced by Burl Ives, tells us a story of the most famous reindeer of all.  He takes us to the beginning of the story where Santa’s reindeer, Donner, meets his son Rudolph…who has a red nose.  You could even say it glows; you could say that because it does in fact glow.  It blinds everyone that looks into it directly, making it rather dangerous.  Donner believes this is a problem and decides to put a cap over Rudolph’s nose to prevent others from ostracizing Rudolph, making it more likely they invite him to join in their reindeer games.

    Later we meet Hermey the elf.  Hermey is one of Santa’s elves, but does not like to make toys.  He want’s to be a dentist.  This proves to be an issue with his supervisor, who naturally wants him to do his job, which does not involve being a dentist.

    In later scenes Rudolph’s nose cap falls off while playing reindeer games in an effort to impress a doe named Clarice, subjecting him to ridicule from his peers.  They simply laughed, called him names, and would no longer invite him to participate in any reindeer games.  Hermey on the other hand gets into a verbal altercation with his supervisor and is given the ultimatum to finish his job, or be fired.  After a brief musical number, Hermey quits.

    Rudolph and Hermey meet each other during a dispute involving the property rights of a nearby snowbank, decide to put aside their differences, and be “independent together”.  They set out into the world, unsure of what to make of themselves and meet Yukon Cornelius, a gold/silver prospector.  Eventually, they find themselves on the Island of Misfit Toys, where they meet other misfits like themselves.  They are allowed by King Moonracer, the local monarch to stay a short while, but he states his kingdom is for misfit toys, not people.

    Following a plot device that convinces Rudolph to go home, the story concludes with the defeat of the Abominable Snowman through Hermie’s crude ability to pull its teeth, and Yukon wrestling the bumble.  Due to blizzard conditions making flight difficult and dangerous, Rudolph finds his glowing red nose to be a useful asset as a result.  In spite of being a little bit different, all three characters are accepted by Santa, and others at the north pole for their gallantry.

    Could this movie be made today?  Absolutely, but not without a few small changes.

    Silver. Gold. Dick. I’m in search for it all!

    Among other things, it has been argued the entire movie is an allegory about gay acceptance.  Rudolph being slightly different is judged by his father, who attempts to butch him up because he is “protecting” his son as a worried father is wont to do.  In reality, Donner being one of Santa’s original eight reindeer and therefore high in north pole society, is only protecting his own standing out of embarrassment.   Hermey is blatantly obvious.  Not only is he the only elf in the story with hair, it is magnificent.  He speaks with an effeminate voice and aspires to work on people’s teeth.  That in itself isn’t gay but it is an odd thing for an elf to want to do.  Finally, Yukon is the classic bear with his performative masculinity, that they meet to guide their path forward to first accepting themselves.  The suspension of disbelief is low by the standard of today’s audience, who are well acquainted with the hero’s journey archetype.

    Where it would likely be changed is in the narrator–not only is Burl Ives dead, he was a white male.  He will be replaced with Morgan Freeman.  The opening scene where Santa is body-shamed by his wife will be reversed, by Santa body shaming his wife with the gift of a Peleton bike.  Santa and the north pole culture will need reinforcement of strict gender norms, and an oppressive culture in order for this storyline to work.  This time around, he cannot be an amiable fellow traveler in the story.  The Island of Misfit Toys unfortunately will have to be made into a delusional society that believes they are being oppressed by the world, thus will all be evangelical Christian misfits.  King Moonracer will be the same in order to reinforce this delusion, because apparently nothing says misfit like a flying lion (when that’s actually freaking awesome).  He will still decide to temporarily take in Rudolph, Hermey, and Yukon because it is the Christian thing to do but knows three gays will not find acceptance on his island.

    Either Rudolph or Hermey will need to be trans.  The easier of the two will likely be Hermey because Santa has a “girl” elf uniform.  Yukon is still a bear,  There will be a Clarice, but she will merely be a “ally” rather than a love interest.

    Honorable mentions:

    Little Drummer Boy.  This cannot be made again today.  The drummer boy is an ass to everyone he meets in Israel.  It takes the near death of his friend, a literal ass, for him to have a very literal “come to Jesus” moment.  It is far too religious for nearly anyone to redo, and thus will be reserved for channels that cater to such audiences in it’s present form.

    Frosty the Snowman.  This cannot be made again.  Apparently, we can’t handle a commercial where a man gives his wife an exercise bike for Christmas.  **SPOILER ALERT** The snowman DIES at the end, nobody can handle that anymore.

     

    Babka being a type of (((pastry))) that I have not tried but is available at a deli I frequently purchase bagels, might suggest this bear a Kosher certification, but I did not find one.  This beer is otherwise fantastic. It is 10% ABV and pours like chocolate syrup…because it more or less is.  They put down making a beer float with a scoop of vanilla ice cream as a serving suggestion.  Quite frankly they do something like Samuel Smith’s Double Chocolate Stout, and went over the top with it, and priced it for the average Trader Joe’s shopper ($5).  Which, isn’t all that bad.  Campanology Brewing Chocolate Babka Stout 4.0/5

  • Great Glib Debate Series: Biff vs. Ozymandias

    And now, for your reading pleasure, the next installment of the debate competition for the ages!  Vote for the winner here.

     

     

    Question as asked:

    Given the existence of a nation-state and some form of Western representative government (think bicameral, parliamentary or some variation thereof), is multiculturalism or assimilationism preferable for the health of the nation and its people?

    Expansion: What “preferable” means will largely be left up to the debater to establish.  It could mean material prosperity, stability, personal or cultural identity; just argue convincingly to your point.

    Multiculturalism – numerous populations from disparate cultures living alongside one another within the nation while retaining much of their cultural distinctiveness.  The proverbial “salad bowl”.  Assimilationism – numerous populations from disparate cultures shedding or deemphasizing most of their cultural distinctiveness to adapt to the prevailing “majority culture”.  The proverbial “melting pot”.

    Biff defends multiculturalism, Ozy defends assimilationism.

     

     

    Biff:

    America has been multicultural since its inception. The very idea of freedom of speech, freedom of religious practice, and freedom of association are all foundational components of the United States, and all clearly support the idea of a multicultural nation. The cultural practices of colonial Georgians differed widely from colonial Virginians, much less the residents of the New England colonies. Concepts of individual liberty and freedom require multiculturalism. Demanding that all citizens adhere to a limited set of cultural ideas is the exact opposite of the type of freedom the United States sought (and still attempts, though often poorly) to provide its citizenry.

    Think of your favorite style of food – French, Italian, Thai, Indian. Now imagine how bland life would be if you could only ever get one of those. Multiculturalism means you can walk down the street and pick up a set of tacos on one corner and sushi at the next. No matter how much you like burgers and fries, after a while it gets boring. Variety is the spice of life.

    Multiculturalism means you get to celebrate (or just as importantly NOT celebrate) Diwali, or Yom Kippur, or Christmas, or Ivana Kupula, on any other Holiday you wish. It means (((They))) can get Chinese food and go to the movies on December 24th and 25th every year. It means you can even celebrate a made up Holiday like Kwanza (and really, aren’t they all made up?).

    Many have claimed Multiculturalism has its drawbacks – clashing ideas from different cultures have been the root of many conflicts over history, but it’s not multiculturalism’s fault – quite the opposite. True multiculturalism has an ingrained respect for other cultures where supremacy of one culture over another isn’t needed. It also demonstrates a true faith in your own culture in that your support of your own culture (born into or adopted) is sufficient that it can withstand differing opinions, viewpoints and traditions without feeling the need to suppress them or attempt to ban them outright. Much like the closely related theory of free speech, the best response  to objectionable cultural practices is exposure to alternate viewpoints and practices.

    Assimilation is for Star Trek villains – or for Bernie fans trying to streamline deodorant options.

     

     

    Ozymandias:

    Multiculturalism is an ideology doomed to failure because it is by its very nature antithetical to the concepts that undergird a nation-state. In short: the ‘salad bowl’ riposte to the ‘melting pot’ analogy ignores the fact that both need a container of some kind, be it ‘a bowl’ or ‘a pot.’ In either case, that vessel constitutes the extant culture into which the ingredients must be mixed and without which you merely have a mess of ingredients on the floor.

    To quote a Glib regarding language: “meanings have words” – and not the other way around, as it is commonly expressed. The same idea applies in the context of the nation-state. Nations don’t get created and then decide to pick and choose which cultures they’ll let in: nation-states are the byproduct of an extant culture. Through most of history those cultures that rose to sufficient heights or grew to sufficient size were almost always tied to an ethnicity and/or a dominant religion and a particular patch of dirt on the Earth.

    It was the United States that changed this conception with the creation of a nation-state steeped in Enlightenment ideas, founded explicitly against the notion of the European, ethnocentric model, to wit: France is where French people live; Italy is for Italians and Spain is for Spanish peoples, etc. The U.S. was founded by various European cultures, each in enclaves sufficient to allow them to grow, up against the pressures of raw nature with an indigenous culture, in which the “melting pot” concept could begin to take hold. Ideas such as rugged individualism inhered in the very nature of the undertaking to come to the New Land and “find one’s fortune.’ The ‘pot’ of the melting pot was already cast before the U.S. was even a political entity.

    By contrast, the evidence of the failed experiment of multiculturalism is everywhere in Europe. This is because the idea that immigrant culture can be imported, yet retain all of its own antecedents, misses the mark for a host of reasons, all related to the “bowl” into which these new cultures must be poured.

    1.     Cultures – i.e. collections of relatively homogenous groups of human beings – are deeply influenced by their environment, including weather, mountains, plains, desert, etc. We seem to have lost touch with this simple, ineluctable fact of life, especially in urban centers, where food magically appears, now that only 2-3% of our population help feed the other 97%.

    2.    Cultures always, always, include ways of solving disputes; there are objectively – measurably – better ways to resolve disputes. In Afghanistan, for example, honor culture demands the killing of the eldest son in response to certain offenses. This is decidedly NOT a good way of resolving disputes if we place any value on human life. Courts are a better way, for just one example.

    3.    No culture can expect to survive, to maintain the “pot” or “bowl,” if the ingredients themselves are allowed to alter the bowl, or destroy it at their whim.

    4.    In a bowl with different ingredients, the radishes shouldn’t get to enslave the avocado because that’s what ‘radish’ culture demands.

    5.    The US explicitly chose assimilation, even with people with a very similar common heritage, namely, Mormons. Statehood was explicitly conditioned upon giving up bigamy. One may argue about whether that specific choice was necessary, but the fact is that the US made historical choices to preserve the distinct characteristics of culture over the “salad” approach.

    None of this even begins to address issues such as language, which includes means of commerce and currency that must be fairly constant for the nation-state to survive. The ascendancy of American English as the lingua franca for the world is not a historical birthright. It is a result of deserved U.S. cultural ascendancy across a range of important areas of human relations, from international aviation, to computers, commerce, science and other technology, including medicine, and on and on. If those gains in civilization mean anything, they certainly indicate the need to preserve the underlying character of the culture that produced those gains.

     

     

    Vote!

     

  • What Are We Reading – November 2019

    Brett L

    I finished Mark Lawrence’s newest trilogy (Impossible Times). It is a closed loop time-travel story centering around a British D&D group. It starts in the early 80s, where the teen protagonist has cancer. He is visited by a future version of himself, who is focused on getting an advanced technology to record memories to his past version so they can record the memories of their sweetheart who will have a serious brain trauma in 30 years. Like all of Lawrence’s stuff, its very readable. I was disappointed about the deus ex machina in the third book that tied everything up in a neat “they all lived happily ever after” bow. Although I will say that the effort put into making the characters’ D&D campaign foreshadow the actual story is fun. Would read again, especially at the cheap price-point.

     

    jesse.in.mb

    Grindr.

    Martin L. Shoemaker – The Last Dance (The Near-Earth Mysteries Book 1). I don’t know that it’s quite a mystery novel. The facts of the case are clear from the start and it’s a matter of context and judgement that make up the suspense of the novel. The sentiments are libertarianish about judgements needing to be made close to home. The cadence of the book was enjoyable, though maybe not to the point of being gripping. I’ll be interested in where Mr. Shoemaker takes the series.

    JW

    Krispy Kritters box. Man, this has really given me a new outlook on life.

     

    mexican sharpshooter

    I am afraid I have nothing for you this month.

    OMWC

    I have even less than mexican unless you want to hear about exciting things like Dow Guide to Flexible Foams. Having Mom here pretty much takes all my non-work time. The books are on the shelf crying in loneliness.

     

    SP

    I’m a little burnt out, so I’ve been reading escapist books. Mostly John Rebus books by Ian Rankin.

    I also read The Red Baron of Arizona  which could serve as a useful primer on how to become a con artist. This guy was seriously dedicated, going to great lengths to pull it off. The book was made into a movie starring Vincent Price, but it’s part of The Criterion Collection, so I haven’t seen it yet.

    Does anyone here subscribe to the The Criterion Channel (TedS?)? Is it worth it?

     

    SugarFree

    I’ve been reading books about murderous children: Carrie and Firestarter by Stephen King, The Bad Seed by William March, The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, The Other by Thomas Tryon, “The Little Assassian” by Ray Bradbury, “Children of the Kingdom” by T. E. D. Klein. No real reason why, I just got interested. There are more for me to read. It’s a substantial subgenre.

     

     

     

  • Great Glibs Debate Series: PieInTheSky vs. Larry Joe

    Our inaugural matchup: Pie vs. Larry Joe! Remember, the Survey Monkey will be open for 24 hours here.

    The question as it was posed to them:

    Given a general libertarian perspective on bodily autonomy taken as a prerequisite, assume an individual has absolute ownership of his own DNA.  Imagine a cloning machine exists such than an individual can take a personal DNA sample and clone a perfect copy of himself.  If someone decides to create clones of himself specifically to kill them, is that murder, or is the clone an extension of that person’s body and, therefore, not murder?
    Pie will argue that it is murder, Larry Joe will argue that it isn’t.

     

    PieInTheSky:What does “an individual has absolute ownership of his own DNA” truly mean? Keeping with the premise, we can assume the DNA can be seen as a form of IP.

    What is DNA? DNA is simply information, data. It is codified in a certain way in organic matter, part of all living things, but, in the end, it is information.

    What is a human? Is an individual just information? I argue against that assumption. An individual is defined as more than just information. A 23andme database does not have the same moral value as the human who spat in a tube. And while we can delete the database, we cannot delete the human. Your DNA does not define you fully. Who looks at a person and sees some DNA?

    A human is an independent sentient biological organism, directed in development by DNA and environment and random chance. From a libertarian perspective, a person’s moral value goes well beyond the bits of data codified in DNA. No one says “all unique DNA configurations have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  A human has a body, a mind, a consciousness, self-awareness – these are the basis of moral consideration. It does, in fact, contain DNA information, but it is much more than the information in itself. The moment a clone is made, it is an independent organism with the above characteristics. While the biologically stored information is the same as the original, the being is separate. The DNA is incidental at best.  Personhood is not defined by unique stored information, and as such a clone is not its DNA, so it is not under the ownership of the original DNA donor. There is no reason to think they would be.

    Contributing information does not give you right to kill. While children are solely composed on the DNA of the parents, it does not mean the parents can simply jointly decide to kill them at any point through life. DNA data configuration is not relevant in decisions of personhood.

     

     

    Larry Joe:

    Surely some would say, “to create a human life simply to kill it is certainly immoral and murder!” They may be correct with regards to the morality of such an action; but ought it really be considered murder?

    The main defense of this most libertarian of libertarians, wishing to kill a piece of himself for sport, is that we already exclude from murder many classifications of killings of humans. Self-defense of one’s own (or another innocent’s) life is a widely recognized right and justification for killing. Defense of one’s domicile, as reflected in numerous “castle” laws placing the burden of proving malicious intent on the state, is another. In a legal sense we often distinguish murder from manslaughter, typically lacking the “malice aforethought” required for murder. Finally we reach the two most relevant distinctions, those with a murkier moral position and greater social disagreement: suicide and abortion.

    The general libertarian perspective of bodily autonomy is supportive of the right to self-determined suicide; it is in essence the ultimate example of such a right. The act of suicide itself is legal in most of the world, with support for assisting a person in committing suicide gaining support in some U.S. and Australian states, Canada, and some European countries, depending upon circumstances. While many may morally oppose committing or assisting in suicide, there is a growing legal movement toward decriminalization.

    Abortion is a divisive issue with a long history of being considered a moral offense.

    In contrast to the moral considerations, note that abortion is legal (up to various stages of gestation) without a justification in nearly every country in the Northern Hemisphere. Even one of the crowning jewels of classical liberal legislation, the United States Bill of Rights, is interpreted as protecting the “fundamental right” to abortion under the “penumbra” of the right to privacy. The Bill of Rights faces enough attacks; must we libertarians undermine it too?

    Given the numerous exceptions to human killing being considered murder, it seems presumptuous to assume that the killing of a clone must be considered such. If one has complete authority over one’s DNA, how can the government justifiably restrict actions taken to property created through that DNA? How can one justify the killing of a fetus, up to the point of partial delivery, without also permitting the killing of a clone created expressly for that purpose? The moral character of a psycho clone killer is certainly up for debate, but for the government to consider him a murderer is a bridge too far.

    Vote!