Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Opinion

  • CFP: the Playoff should not be expanded (and it need not exist at all)

    The following article is pure puffery.  The intention is to deal with a topic thoughtfully but not necessarily thoroughly; further, a fact or two may be more than a bit bent.  Read critically . . . and enjoy!

     

    CFP: the Playoff should not be expanded

    (and it need not exist at all)

    There’s plenty of energy around the college football playoffs, how they should be configured, and who sh

    ould be in them.  Here’s a short essay that makes essentially three short points

    • a playoff isn’t needed at all and never was
    • the shape of a playoff doesn’t matter, but the shorter and smaller it is the better
    • it doesn’t much matter who should be in playoffs.

     

    The quest for national consensus reached critical mass in 1998 with the rollout of the Bowl Championship Series and the crowning of the Tennessee Volunteers as its first champion.  Since there is plenty written about the failings and risks and history of the BCS, we won’t get into describing how the teams were decided other than to say polls and computers arrived at the top two playoff teams who then met to decide the championship.  Before the BCS, any number of polls and agencies (and universities!) declared champions, and everyone got along great agreement was rare.

     

    cogito, ergo sum

    There’s an emotional need for (perceived) exactness and certainly that some people have, so shared or disputed championships have riled nearly everyone:  fans, alumni, players, boosters, and alien visitors in low orbit.  It’s worth noting that plenty of writers and services had, even after Korea, declared national champions before bowl season even started; it was not nationally agreed that post-season play meant anything whatsoever (except, maybe, it proved only that a train ran from Yale to Florida).  Because of conference obligations by bowl, the arguably best two teams seldom met, and odd results from the various bowls that were played made reconciling results impossible, so almost no one invested much energy in the notion of a national champion.  To some extent, though, oxen were gored, and partisans screamed their cases and their critiques, but generally college football was just thought to be a fun diversion.  Meanwhile, three hundred some odd national championships were claimed by various schools to account for the 150 years the game had been played:  there is no right or wrong to any of those.

     

    I guarantee it !

    My notion about the championship fervor is that it has been fueled by the Super Bowl.  The AFL and NFL were not giant leagues:  originally most teams in either met and played once every year in the few (dozen) games, so selecting a champion by record to go the Super Bowl at least demonstrated some logic.  The leagues would eventually grow and merge, and their popularity would soar in the last half of the twentieth century to tacitly symbolize and codify how all sports should be managed and seasons decided.  The consolidated NFL would go on to acquire mythic proportion, displacing baseball as the both the national past-time and triplet to apple pie and motherhood.  Ever since, the pointlessness of its burgeoning playoff schedule has seldom been remarked; the month-long festival came to fairly-well supplant or at least necessarily supplement the traditional holidays.  Essentially, NFL playoffs came to be as emotionally necessary as Christmas, and that mania has corrupted and dominated everything ever since.

     

    With the BCS, the best teams, on the NFL model, met . . . usually.  Somebody had to win that game, and to some extent everyone was satisfied with the single, national result.  Except that many were not, and I would simply point out that the dissatisfied people under the BCS are exactly the same sort of people as were dissatisfied before the BCS.  If your ox was gored before, you were mad; if your ox was gored under BCS, you were still mad.  This is the clearest and easiest critique of the BCS (and of any playoff):  it resolves and it changes precisely nothing about whom we believe is the national champion.

     

     

     

     

     

    The biggest challenges to the credibility of the BCS years are three:

    • Boise State seemed to repeatedly deliver perfect seasons in its humble conference but never earn much consideration for the finale.
    • An undefeated Auburn team (2004?) with one of the best offensive backfields to ever play the game was not voted into the finale.
    • USC and Ohio State won BCS championships while playing critical players who would later be ruled ineligible; indeed, both schools vacated considerable wins from that era. There is no universally satisfactory way to resolve the outcome of those seasons other than individual conjecture, which, of course, is how every season is, in the end, weighed in any regard, playoff or no.

     

    The deepest concern has always been that deciding the top two teams has never been unanimous.  For many, the one-game BCS finale could never be relied upon to make sure that an excellent, deserving third- or fourth-placed team might unfairly miss the big game.  A longer, wider playoff would at least settle the question of polls, especially if a politburo of unassailable nobles could be convened to pick the four top teams without being corrupted by the influence of computers or polls or conference bias.

    Thus was born the College Football Playoff system.  Under the CFP, four teams play single elimination games in January to decide the previous year’s champion, and, generally, there has been a reduced tension about the outcome.  But the logic for the four teams is not universally satisfactory and still raises a few questions.

    Two four-seeds and a three- have made it into the CFP finale; both fours- won.  This doesn’t solve or prove anything, though!  Some are consoled that the champion, obviously the best team post hoc, survived being underrated (fourth!) to make it into the playoff and prove themselves:  four teams works!  But it might be that even more people are more certain now than ever that the playoff should be broadened:  there well might be seven- and eight-seed teams that would win out if only they had the chance.  Logic only tells us one thing:  this argument never ends, no matter how many teams are added to the playoffs; someone will still argue the list, same as before, same as before there was a list.

     

    Statistics tells us something worse:  more playoff games afford more chances for the best team to fail to make it to the finale.  By whatever criteria one might agree that a team is the best at the end of the season, and, to the extent that doG on his throne in Heaven could make sure that team was selected by the CFP committee to play amongst the final, say, sixteen, the extra games give that “best team” a greater chance to stumble and fall out of the process.  This theoretically best team might lose a low-scoring affair by a single point to a team that is then eliminated in the next round, thinly as well, and so on . . . leaving us eventually with a champion who narrowly backed into winning it all after having a demonstrably worse season, which even a child would criticize.

    This high-lights another question of ranking teams:  what does a win prove?  A game is a sort of coin flip, but you need to imagine a coin, in the case of 2019 Clemson, that probably comes up heads 90% of the time.  As UNC proved this year, one needs only a tiny fraction of luck to be the team that is in town when tails comes up; more to the point:  UNC had the coin standing on edge until it finally fell heads (insert sad trombone sound here).  Pointy balls bounce exceedingly odd, but nothing went wrong enough for Clemson that UNC could prevail . . . but more than a dash of luck was involved in the final outcome.  We only get to flip the coin a dozen times:  football is a brutal sport that can not be mounted more than once a week; there is only so much of this ammo you can take to this kind of range, but a decision must be made.  Single elimination means every added playoff layer increases, not reduces, the likelihood of a dubious champion.  Ergo, a shorter playoff is better.

     

    The CFP’s committee picks four teams today; the criteria for the four are arguably arbitrary, and the selections are capricious.  The ballots are secret, and there is essentially no way to quash concerns about the equity of the process and whether even the supposed criteria are respected.  Season win-loss, conference championships, and strength-of-schedule are presumed to dominate considerations, but there is no system to say how the decisions were made much less how they should be made.

    Other emotional criteria can never be resolved to the satisfaction of the losers.  For example, what does it even mean to have the best team of the season?  Is it to have been the best team on some weighted week-by-week basis?  Is there a weighting of SoS over results that is unambiguously determinant?  These questions have never been settled, with or without a playoff.

     

    How does a season-ending injury to a critical player count:  is his team diminished in the now because of who they are, or is some fudge factor needed to credit them for who they should be?  Returning to that first BCS championship:  Chris Weinke, one of the greatest college quarterbacks of all time, was injured and did not play; as close as the game ended, it is hard to imagine Florida State not winning had Weinke played; by extension, they were the best team at the end of the year . .  up until the moment he was injured. . . but they lost the finale without him.  On a related track:  one notion that is fairly universal is the belief that a loss early in the season is, ceteris paribus, more forgivable than a later loss.

    From these foregoing examples, one can see two things:  it is impossible to agree on how to weigh schedule and injury impact on the one hand, but, on the other:  the only thing most people agree on (forgiving an early loss) is silly on its face.

     

    So where does all this leave us?  Well, the process for determining the champion has never been solid, agreed, or rational.  Further, there is no process or breadth of scale that will eliminate disputes at the end of the season even in the playoff is expanded.  This leads us to conclude only one thing:  there is no unemotional need for a playoff . . . of any size.  Choose your champion at the end of the regular season by whatever criteria you prefer, and then watch the championship, however it might be configured, merely for the love of the game.

  • Economics Corner with Paul Krugman and Winston’s Mom

    Damnit Sugarfree!  You think your the only schmuck around here with no time to toss something together??

    Here’s one where Krugabe questions who is out of touch with reality.

    Will the Democratic presidential nomination go to a centrist or a progressive? Which choice would give the party the best chance in next year’s election? Honestly, I have no idea.

    This is good tack to take, given your inability to predict anything, including things you are purported to be an expert.

    One thing I can say, however, is that neither centrism nor progressivism is what it used to be.

    There was a time when arguments between centrists and progressives were framed as debates between realism and idealism. These days, however, it often seems as if the centrists, not the progressives, are out of touch with reality. Indeed, sometimes it feels as if centrists are Rip Van Winkles who spent the last 20 years in a cave and missed everything that has happened to America and the world since the 1990s.

    You can see this in politics, where Joe Biden has repeatedly declared that Republicans will have an “epiphany” once Donald Trump is gone, and once again become reasonable people Democrats can deal with. Given the GOP’s scorched-earth politics during the Obama years, that’s a bizarre claim.

    Turnabout is fair play asshole, team cuck simply decided to start playing by the same rules team cunt played by–since forever, really.  Which is par for the course for team cuck, it takes them 20 years or more to come around to anything.

    You can also see it in economics. There are many reasonable criticisms you could offer of Elizabeth Warren’s economic proposals. But the one I keep seeing is that Warren would turn America into (cue scary music) Europe, maybe even (cue even scarier music) France. And you have to wonder whether people who say such things have paid any attention to either Europe or America over the past few decades.

    We know where France is located dumbass.

    Just to be clear, Europe does have big economic problems. But they’re not the ones such people seem to imagine.

    When people say such things, they seem to have in mind a picture of the U.S.-Europe comparison that did seem to have some validity in the 1990s. In that picture, nations with large social spending and extensive government regulation of markets suffered from “Eurosclerosis,” persistent lack of jobs.

    Employers, the story went, were reluctant to expand both because of high taxes and because they feared not being able to fire workers once hired. At the same time, workers had little incentive to accept jobs because they could live off generous social programs.

    Europe also seemed to be lagging in the adoption of new technology: For a while, the U.S. surged ahead in making use of the internet and information technology in general, leading to arguments that Europe’s high taxes and regulation were discouraging innovation.

    But all of that was a long time ago. The jobs gap has largely vanished; adults in their prime working years are actually more likely to be employed in Europe, France included, than they are in America.

    Any gap in the adoption of information technology has also long since vanished; households in much of Europe are as or more likely to have broadband than their U.S. counterparts, partly because the U.S. failure to limit providers’ monopoly power has led to much higher prices for internet access.

    Unemployment for the EU this year (that is 2019, not sometime in the 1990’s) is 6.3%, with France being 8.6%.  Lets compare that to the United States at 3.6%.  While you cherry-pick the price of broadband in Europe ($90 EU vs. $200 US) these savings seem to be moot compared to the price Europeans pay to heat their homes, drive cars, or even anything else…here’s a rundown of the cost of basic things between the US and Germany, for example.

    Then again the price of anything is determined by it’s demand, and is influenced by a variety of factors.  It seems silly to pick one product and simply declare one country is doing something better than the other.  The fact of the matter it is often much more complicated than that, but since your average reader probably cunt count to 12 without the physical deformity of a sixth digit on each hand, you can get away with cherry-picking.

    It’s true that European nations have lower GDP per capita than we do, but that’s largely because, unlike most Americans, most Europeans actually have significant vacation time and hence work fewer hours per year. This sounds like a choice about work-life balance, not an economic problem.

    And on that most fundamental of indicators, life expectancy, the U.S. has fallen far behind: French residents can expect, on average, to live more than four years longer than Americans. Why? Universal health care and policies that mitigate extreme inequality are the most likely explanations.

    Now, I don’t want this to sound like praise of all things European. The nations on the euro remain terribly vulnerable to financial crises, because they’ve adopted a shared currency without a shared banking safety net; only the heroic leadership of Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, avoided a catastrophic collapse of the euro in 2012.

    Europe also suffers from persistent weakness in demand because key players, Germany in particular, have an obsessive fear of deficits, even when the European economy desperately needs stimulus.

    They’re right to fear it.  The cost of them ruling over the continent now appears to be paying for Spain and Italy to take naps in the afternoon, the Turks to commit atrocities against the Kurds, the French to go on vacation, and for the Greeks to do…whatever it is they do, rather than be productive.

    These are big problems, severe enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if Europe is the epicenter of the next global crisis. But the problem with Europe is not that its social programs are too generous and its governments too intrusive. If anything, it’s almost the opposite: Europe’s economy is vulnerable because a combination of political fragmentation and ideological rigidity has left its politicians unwilling to be Keynesian enough.

    When all else fails–PROG HARDER.

    The point is that centrists who point to Europe as an illustration of the bad things that happen when you’re too enthusiastic about pursuing social justice are stuck decades in the past. Modern European experience actually vindicates progressive claims that we can do a lot to make America fairer without destroying incentives. And even Europe’s problems make the case for more government intervention, not less.

    By all means, let’s talk about whether “Medicare for all,” wealth taxes and other progressive proposals are actually good ideas. But trying to shoot them down by going on about how terrible things are in France is a sure sign that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

    That’s fair.  Medicare for all, is a fucking retarded idea that will bankrupt the country, let alone multiple hospitals and health care providers that will suddenly find their profit margins have gone to hell.  Wealth taxes will result in people fleeing the country, or holding their wealth offshore–like what happened when they tried it in France.  Except nobody is shooting is down because of how much a shithole France is, they’re shooting it down because we have practical experience from experiments with these progressive proposals  BECAUSE THEY WAS TRIED IN FRANCE YOU DUMBASS.

     

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    Clean up your Messes Edition

     

    It’s time to strike camp, pay our debts, and get out of town!  It’s

     

    Week Eleven Most OverRated Football Program Results

     

    1          Minnesota was not stomped by Penn State

    2          Oregon was idle

    I got nothing (except that SMU rant from last week which I absolutely stand by).

     

     

    Things are going easy for the Committee since both Bama and Penn State fell on their swords.

    1. Ohio State made soup of the Terps
    2. LSU bested Bama at Bama
    3. Alabama hung 41 on LSU but lost anyway
    4. Penn State was upset at Minnesoda
    5. Clemson smoked a pack-o-Wolves at NCSU
    6. Georgia toyed with Mizzou

     

    not SMU chicks

    Unsolicited memoir:  I was told I was going to a single UGA sorority soirée over the weekend but got suckered into three, three I tellsya soiréeauxeses.  Tickets were row 13 about dead midfield:  I had a better view than ESPN.  It was pretty near freezing as the game ended, which is fine, but the whole point of going to an SEC game is to take in shorts-n-skirts season:  oh well, a certain sort of squandering of a trip to Athens unless you’re into impotent Tigers.

     

    But the Committee doesn’t care about that; they had a list to update . . . thus:

    1. LSU is set for Atlanta
    2. Ohio State has Penn State and Michigan before getting to Indy
    3. Clemson is sharpening their skates, waiting for the pond to freeze
    4. Georgia has Auburn before Atlanta
    5. Alabama needs too much help at this point
    6. Oregon can make a statement against the Utes

     

    College Football Playoff Oughta Be

    Big Ten        Ohio State might see Minnesoda in the championship

    SEC                LSU need only handle aTm and Auburn to meet UGA in the championship

    ACC                Clemson is pretty much done with the regular season

    PAC64             Oregon lost to Auburn, a team UGA could well beat for its third quality win

    Big XII            Oklahoma struggled to edge TCU and closed the books on itself for the year

     

    Silly Loser Ordination

    Alabama                       best one-loss              team in the nation

    Wisconsin                    best two-loss              team in the nation

    Iowa                              best three-loss          team in the nation

    Washington                 best four-loss             team in the nation

    Michigan State            best five-loss              team in the nation

    South Carolina            best six-loss               team in the nation

    Tulsa                             best seven-loss            team in the nation

    Northwestern              best eight-loss            team in the nation

    Rice                               best nine-loss            team in the nation

    Texas Southern           only ten-loss              team in the nation

     

    Second CFP Week N + 1 Most OverRated Football Programs

     1          Minnesota was not stomped by Penn State and rockets beyond their pay grade

    2          Utah  re-enters the fray but won’t play anyone until Oregon in the Pacific punch-out

    3          Georgia re-enters our list after their sudden CFP promotion; remember that they lost to South Carolina who has since lost to Ap State

    4          Oregon was idle and is probably not overrated to speak of anymore

     

    Honorable Mentions

    Things have settled more or less where they belong, so there’s not much to say here.

    Toldjaso™ Boise State buoys in the competency vacuum but plays no one for the rest of the year.

    Kansas State plummeted after losing to Texas, but I just didn’t have the guts last week to say they were truly overrated; send their files to the basement already.

    Formerly-nailed Appalachian State jumped into the rankings, but there’s no real test for them left, so I’m not arguing with the Committee down past two dozen spots.

    Psuedotoldjasos:  Already-called Wake Forest and SMU finally fell plumb out of the rankings; we wish to hear their names no more.

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall

    1          Georgia lost at home to the second-best team from South Carolina that almost lost to UNC

    2          Utah lost to an unrated USC but seems to be coming back

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    2          Notre Dame sold off after losing to a highly ranked Georgia

    7          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt and continues to muddle

    7          Iowa was no number 15 as Michigan proved

    7          Wake Forest allowed Louisville to hang 62 on them

    7          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    11        Boise State lost by three to toothless BYU

    11        Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    11        Memphis lost to possibly 80th best team in the nation Temple and disappeared for a while

    11        SMU lost at Memphis fell eight places

    15        Michigan State slowly fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    15        Clemson was dethroned by barely edging Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    15        Texas lost to OU (mid-season toldjasos™) and has continued to suck and plummet

    15        Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU (early-season toldjasos™), but then they let Kansas hang 48 on them at home

    15        Appalachian State got a case of the Statesboro Blues and fell over six slots

    20        Auburn over-paid for losing to Florida

    20        Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn . . . or maybe not

    20        Washington State was de-ranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    20        Virginia continues to lose after losing to can-play-with-UGA Notre Dame

    24        Oklahoma lost to Kansas State . . . inexcusable

    25        San Diego State didn’t make the Committee’s list at all

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU (that was a typo or something, I swear)

    2          Florida seems to have earned their status by defeating top-ten Auburn

    3          Oklahoma is no longer a blown call because Kansas State

    4          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    5          Michigan is no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    6          Washington State is no longer a blown call because UCLA

     

    Our year now stands at 25 – 2 – 4.  The week endeth thus!

     

     

    links to older opinions:
    2019-11-07                  2019-10-31                  2019-10-24                  2019-10-17                  2019-10-10
    2019-10-03                 2019-09-26                  2019-09-19                 2019-09-13                 2019-09-06
    Disclosure of sources of bias:  your correspondent has attended the University of Tennessee, Memphis State and the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College . . . and he sleeps with an alumna of Georgia whose parents met at Washington State . . . and his son went to Houston . . . and he never met anyone from TCU he didn’t like . . . and he irrationally hates Notre Dame, UCF, Clemson, and Notre Dame.

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    Everything is Better with Meetings Edition

    Few of the top teams in the game played this weekend, but, with the first Committee meeting and the blues dealt at Statesboro and Memphis, the sport held onto its title as the preeminent nationwide shitshow.  With only five opinions on the line, three (kinda) came true this week:

     

    Week Ten Most OverRated Football Program Results

    1          San Diego State didn’t make the Committee’s list at all

    2          SMU lost at Memphis in an over-televised much-to-do-about-nothing throw-down and fell eight places

    3          Appalachian State lost to Georgia Southern and fell over six places, totally out of the AP top 25

    4          Minnesota was off but will get stomped by Penn State next weekend

    5          Oregon had to wake up and play to beat USC

    That totals three more toldjaso™ this week to end the purely AP portion of the year.

     

    Here at ground zero, the SMU-Memphis hype was unavoidable.  Neither team had proven to be a top thirty squad, but both have bobbed about the bottom of the AP 25 because they had failed to lose to a bunch of nobodies.  Suddenly GameDay sets up stage on Beale Street and the Liberty Bowls sells the most tickets ever.  Fine.  Whatevs.

     

     

     

    SMU: not worth it !

    Memphis capitalized on the attention by dredging up personalities from circa Watergate, locking in place our reputation as a backwater with great food.  According to police data, within the city Saturday, there were no homicides and nearly no crime downtown, aside from one theft so there’s that.  The main profit from the entire mess was this troll-of-the-week sign floating through the crowd:

                     “SMU:  we paid athletes before it was cool.”

    The Tigers had a big night; good for them.  Myself, I repented of SMU a decade ago.

     

     

     

    Meanwhile, the Committee finally flew to meet in Tarrant County (motto:  We’re so Tired of being called “Dallas”).  Their first opinion of the season shouldn’t be too important, but there’s a certain stickiness to these votes:  no one wants to admit that they’ve been wrong and change.  There are some big games to come, but this is their first pass at the playoffs:

    1. Ohio State
    2. LSU
    3. Alabama
    4. Penn State
    5. Clemson
    6. Georgia

     

     

     

    College Football Playoff Oughta Be

    Big Ten           Ohio State or Penn State

    SEC                Alabama or LSU after Florida excused itself from the proceedings via Athens

    ACC                Clemson survived UNC, so now they’re around for the rest of the year

    PAC64             Oregon is just too weak; expect a second team from the Big Ten or SEC instead

    Big XII            Oklahoma is the best one-loss team in the nation even after losing to Kansas State

    Notre Dame    is not as good as Oregon and merely survived Virginia Tech

     

    SMU: you damned well know it’s not a good idea

    Much of this settles out soon:  Ohio State and Penn State will likely settle the Big Ten when they meet on the 23d; Alabama hosts LSU this weekend and should win by about 8.  I’m okay with the Committee except that I think Oklahoma and Oregon are better than Georgia; Georgia is a mistake.  Back to our weekly idiocy:  who’s who and what’s what?

     

    First CFP Week N + 1 Most OverRated Football Programs

     1          Minnesota is not a wild favorite of the Committee and will be stomped by Penn State

    2          Oregon is barely overrated and has a clear road to winning the PAC256

    We just don’t have much to talk about after the Committee weighed in.

     

     

    Honorable Mentions

    The Season is Kinda Over Already Edition

    I still like LSU, but they’re still not Numero Uno.

    Previously-bagged Georgia is only a ten but is on their way to Atlanta, a very, very short drive.  Even if they lose there, some will still have them near the top despite their losing to South Carolina who has since lost to Tennessee who has lost to Atlanta standard-bearer Georgia State who lost to Western Michigan 57-10 who lost to Eastern Michigan who has lost to Toledo and Buffalo and, well, you get the picture.  This weekend NewWife’s Dawgs host toothless Missouri and your humble correspondent:  pray for me as I drink my way through an SEC sorority soiree in Athens.

    SMU: you can lose your fool head over those girls

    Previously-bagged Utah won’t play anyone until Oregon in the Pacific punch-out.  Previously-bagged Florida is about four spots strong but won’t play anyone for the rest of the year. Previously-bagged Memphis has Cincinnati left, so one or the other will plummet and the other will be seemingly legitimized, but I won’t be sticking my toe back in the AAC filth again this year.  Previously-bagged Wake Forest will lose to Va Tech and Clemson; make of that what you will.

    Kansas State plays several twenty-somethings yet and will lose to one of them and then fall out of the top twenty, but I don’t think I care to waste a stronger opinion on them than that.  Boise State buoys in the competency vacuum but plays no one for the rest of the year.  SMU is still overrated after tanking to the Tigers because no voter wants to admit that he voted a team a good twenty spots higher than he should have.

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall

    1          Georgia lost at home to the second-best team from South Carolina that almost lost to UNC

    2          Utah lost to an unrated USC but seems to be coming back

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    2          Notre Dame sold off after losing to a highly ranked Georgia

    7          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt and continues to muddle

    7          Iowa was no number 15 as Michigan proved

    7          Wake Forest allowed Louisville to hang 62 on them

    7          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    11        Boise State lost by three to toothless BYU

    11        Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    11        Memphis lost to possibly 80th best team in the nation Temple and disappeared for a while

    11        SMU lost at Memphis fell eight places

    15        Michigan State slowly fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    15        Clemson was dethroned by barely edging Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    15        Texas lost to OU (mid-season toldjasos™) and has continued to suck and plummet

    15        Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU (early-season toldjasos™), but then they let Kansas hang 48 on them at home

    15        Appalachian State got a case of the Statesboro Blues and fell over six slots

    20        Auburn over-paid for losing to Florida

    20        Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn . . . or maybe not

    20        Washington State was de-ranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    20        Virginia continues to lose after losing to can-play-with-UGA Notre Dame

    24        Oklahoma lost to Kansas State . . . inexcusable

    25        San Diego State didn’t make the Committee’s list at all

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU

    2          Florida seems to have earned their status by defeating top-ten Auburn

    3          Oklahoma is no longer a blown call because Kansas State

    4          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    5          Michigan is no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    6          Washington State is no longer a blown call because UCLA

    Our year now stands at 25-2-4.  The week endeth thus!

     

    SMU: just walk away . . . there will be other girls

  • Who’s a Good Boy?

    Everyone love dogs.  Unless they are some sort of cat-loving sociopath.  Even the President.

    This is my review of Founders Underground Mountain Imperial Brown Ale

    A few days ago, this piece was put out by the Washington Post:

    The original photo

    “AMERICAN HERO!” Trump tweeted, with the photo of the dog he said ran down Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Syrian tunnel before Baghdadi killed himself.

    The distinctive star of the medal was replaced with a paw print.

    Trump and the Pentagon initially declined to release the dog’s name, later confirmed as Conan, but the canine has become a social media sensation after Trump tweeted a photo Monday.

    Conan also collided with a real-world moment after the conservative site Daily Wire tweeted the image Tuesday with McCloughan removed.

    A watermark for the site appears in Trump’s tweet, but it is a cropped version that removes the attribution of the source photo, which is the Associated Press. That would have indicated that it began as a legitimate news photo, raising the question of whether Trump or a staffer knew McCloughan had been edited out.

    The writer, Alex Horton has in his tagline he is an Veteran of the war in Iraq.  Since the inane notion that we cannot criticize people currently, or at any time ever served in the military is starting to make the rounds again, its either up to Swiss or I to go after this guy.  Because heaven forbid somebody that currently or at any time in the past served in the military can possibly be seen in a negative manner under any circumstance…

    Sorry Swissy.

    Alex, as a Veteran of two tours in Iraq, it is my humble opinion that you are a fucking idiot.  Do you honestly think Trump is dumb enough to NOT see there is a picture of a dog in front of him, whom he is giving a medal?  Now, I get that you think Trump is a moron, but do you not think it is possible Trump or his staffer might remember that time he gave a medal…TO A DOG?  Maybe where you live in idiot-land you might give a random dog a medal for being cute and walking up tall without its tail covering it’s genitals but here in reality we see that its a Photoshop.  People may be dumb but we realize the photo is clearly fake, and that Trump retweeted the photo because its funny, and that is one hell of a dog.

    Who’s a good boy?

    Here’s the kicker, the NYT got a hot take from the MOH recipient that was removed from the photo:

    McCloughan saw the photo as an attempt to herald the dog’s actions in combat, he told the New York Times.

    “This recognizes the dog is part of that team of brave people,” he said. McCloughan said he worked with military dogs in Vietnam, where they helped scouts detect enemy positions.

    McCloughan was 23 in May 1969 when his unit was caught in a fierce firefight in Tam Ky. He was raked by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade while assessing other soldiers for their injuries, but despite his wounds, McCloughan repeatedly braved enemy fire to carry the injured to safety.

    This is the world we live in, where I am forced to point out to idiots like Alex Horton they are being idiots and it comes out with me looking like I am defending Trump.  Screw you Alex, and all the idiots that took it upon themselves to fact-check an obvious joke, when they could be fact-checking or showing any kind of skepticism towards things that actually matter.

    What is not a joke is this beer.  Quite frankly, I have yet to come across a Founder’s varietal that is a joke.  This is a heavy-bodied brown ale with espresso notes and aged in bourbon barrels.  They might go too far with the coffee, but that just makes it better suited for day-drinking.  It will not keep you up all night, baiting your neighbors dog.  Do not drink this cold, and do not chug it.  Founders Underground Mountain Imperial Brown Ale:  4.4/5

     

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    I’d sooner be a Wildcat edition

    Standard Advice:  go with your first read!  Whenever, it seems, I’ve changed my mind on the line, the putt then breaks the original way . . . every stinking time.  And so it went for me after I recently opined:

     

    Oklahoma gets better every week, and the grind past Texas qualifies them to enjoy a well-earned last laugh . . . they were, they are the real deal in 2019 and so we must admit that the Sooners were not over-ranked after all.  I was dead wrong on this one.

     

    Well, when I said I was wrong:  I was wrong.  After several weeks in the top six, the newly schooner-less Sooners laid an egg in Manhattan and finally fell five spots in the AP.  K State walked away from them after an even first half; OU brought it back close, but the Wildcats were just working clock and enjoying the inevitable win while the network commenters tried to convince viewers otherwise; a failed onside kick almost gave Norman a chance and did give the guys in the replay booth at Conference a nice excuse to delay play a good seven minutes before the fat lady could sing.  Anyways, the Crimson were Creamed but will go on to a solid bowl.

     

     

    Personal note:  the 2000 KSU team had the quickest defense I’ve ever seen, and you simply couldn’t pass against Terence Newman.  Their fans travel well and have a fearsome, deafening, unending set of cheers.

     

     

     

    Meanwhile, master-class of the week in pointy ball was given by The University of the South at Columbus.  The Buckeyes applied the very best talent from Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Maryland to the would-be spoilers from Madison.  Save future injuries, LSU is the only defense that would seem to have a strong chance of stopping Ohio State.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Notre Dame is perennially overrated, and you might say that I beat that drum enough, but, earlier in the year, they lost to Georgia and then were still ranked above Georgia; it’s just ridiculous, predictable, and this nonsense is crippling the ability of Catholic children to develop logic skills.  Saturday #19 Michigan plowed them like so much snow and the AP accordingly downgraded them eight slots to finally be below both of their known betters.  The great Protestant conspiracy to keep these good kids down has finally won 2019, but don’t worry:  the ND nonsense will flare back up next summer.  Moving on:

     

    Week Nine Most OverRated Football Program Results

    1          Minnesota did make soup out of Maryland 52 – 10

    2          Appalachian State did ruin the Jags of South Alabama

    3          SMU survived red-shirt factory Houston’s sometime quarterback Tune

    4          Oregon edged Washington State at home

    So ZERO new toldjasos™ this week, but, speaking of Notre Dame, I never booked the original win on them at the time so I’m adding that to the list now and taking Oklahoma off my list of misses as well.  Otherwise, a very quiet week we had.  So what’s the longer view?

     

    Well, the Committee (motto:  We Meet in Grapevine!) has yet to convene or vote.  The question, like most years, is:  who’s number four?  Conference championships are a toss-up, but we have every reason to expect these teams in the mix:

     

    Big Ten           Ohio State, Penn State, or Minnesota

    SEC                  Alabama, LSU, or Florida

    ACC                 Clemson

     

     

     

     

    And these guys can pound sand:

    PAC64              Oregon is just too weak; expect a second team from the Big Ten or SEC instead

    Big XII             Oklahoma is only the best of the rest after losing to KSU

    Notre Dame    is not as good as Oregon

    AAC                  UCF is not a top twenty team

    MWest             Boise State is not a top twenty team

    MAC                 Ball State might be a top hundred team

    Okay, everyone knew all that before the season’s first snap (it’s rigged against the small schools!!!!11!!)  Back to our weekly idiocy:  who’s who and what’s what?

     

    Yet Another Week N + 1 Most OverRated Football Programs

    1          San Diego enters our list as most overrated team of the year but is off next week

    2          SMU will meet Memphis in an overrated (and televised) mouse tussle

    3          Appalachian State continues to dominate the JV and will host the Statesboro Blues

    4          Minnesota is trending up but will get stomped by Penn State

    5          Oregon is barely overrated but might have their hands full with USC

     Honorable mentions – I like LSU, but they’re not Numero Uno (Ohio State at a minimum is clearly better on offense).  Baylor is too big for its britches, and Cincinnati love is overheating, but I’ll give them a bit of rope for now.  The same guys who formerly believed in Oklahoma have switched horses to Kansas State.  Previously bagged Utah and Boise State are sliding back up in the competency vacuum.  Wake Forest shouldn’t be within ten slots of the AP at all, and yet they’re there.  This much never changes:  the AP 25 is lunacy, a doctoral thesis in mass hysteria begging to be written.  Now:  on to accounting.

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall

    1          Georgia lost at home to the second-best team from South Carolina that had lost to UNC

    2          Utah lost to an unrated USC but seems to be coming back

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    2          Notre Dame sold off after losing to a highly ranked Georgia

    7          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt

    7          Iowa was no number 15 as Michigan proved

    7          Wake Forest allowed Louisville to hang 62 on them

    7          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    11        Boise State lost by three to toothless BYU

    11        Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    11        Memphis lost to possibly 80th best team in the nation Temple and disappeared

    14        Michigan State slowly fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    14        Clemson was dethroned by Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    14        Texas lost to OU (mid-season toldjasos™) and has continued to suck

    14        Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU (early-season toldjasos™), but then they let Kansas hang 48 on them at home

    18        Auburn over-paid for losing to Florida

    18        Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn . . . or maybe not

    20        Washington State was de-ranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    20        Virginia continues to lose after losing to can-play-with-UGA-but-not-Michigan Notre Dame

    22        Oklahoma lost to Kansas State . . . inexcusable

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU

    2          Florida seems to have earned their status by defeating top-ten Auburn

    3          Oklahoma is no longer a blown call because Kansas State

    4          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    5          Michigan is no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    6          Washington State is no longer a blown call because UCLA

    Our year now stands at 22–2-4.  So closes a tasty week!

     

    links to older opinions:                  2019-10-24                 2019-10-17                  2019-10-10                  2019-10-03                  2019-09-26                  2019-09-19                  2019-09-13                  2019-09-06
    Disclosure of sources of bias:  your correspondent has attended the University of Tennessee, Memphis State and the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College . . . and he sleeps with an alumna of Georgia whose parents met at Washington State . . . and his son went to Houston . . . and he never met anyone from TCU he didn’t like . . . and he irrationally hates Notre Dame, UCF, Clemson, and Notre Dame.

     

  • The Moral Panic of Joanna Schroeder

    Joanna Schroeder as pictured in the CNN article.

    California mother and serious writer Joanna Schroeder recently got her fifteen minutes of fame courtesy of breathless CNN reporter Sara Sidner. Why, exactly? You see, Ms. Schroeder is very, very concerned about the well-being of her teenage sons, as a good mother should be, and wanted to raise the alarm for other mothers of teenage boys to be aware of the insidious reach of right-wing propaganda. She valiantly warned her fellow naive do-gooders about the sinister extremist messaging being used to target youth, lest they be “drawn in by snarky memes.”

    Words to watch for

    Snowflake: used to mock people deemed too sensitive, especially about issues impacting minorities

    SJW: stands for “social justice warrior,” a term used to mock civil rights activists

    Sidner does offer the rote, perfunctory disclaimer that Schroeder “does not shun mainstream conservative thought,” yet curiously fails to provide any evidence of that, or any example of what constitutes mainstream conservative thought. This claim is completely and laughably undermined by the inclusion of the terms “snowflake,” and “SJW” in the sidebar list of forbidden speech.

    Those terms have been part of conservative dialogue for years. National Review is the leading organ of that mainstream conservative thought which Schroeder claims to not shun, yet of which she is blissfully unaware. A quick web search of the National Review website yielded articles from early 2015 by James Lileks and Jennifer Kabbany with the contemporary usage of “snowflake” as a term for overly-sensitive, nominally adult humans. Rather prophetically, Kabbany’s piece is titled “The Death of College Humor.” The term “SJW” was first used by National Review in late 2015 in articles by George Leef and Katherine Timpf.

    Those who use the phrase sarcastically, as most do, imply that the snowflakes’ sensibilities are impossibly delicate, and shatter when confronted with the horrible realities of the world, such as capitalism or people who are insufficiently troubled by the link between climate change and industrial lettuce production. –James Lileks

    Four and a half years is forever ago in the age of internet and twenty-four hour news. Yet, somehow, concerned mother Schroeder and professional journalist Sidner both missed those and all the subsequent references in National Review and other conservative media. And all the serious, informed, and rational discussion about the chilling effect of speech codes, and the erosion of first amendment rights.

    Words to watch for
    Beta… Cuck…
    Femenoid/femoid…
    Redpilled…
    Blood and Soil…
    14 or 88…
    ((( )))…

    That’s quite an impressive list that they have assembled, and some of them are actual white supremacist dogwhistles: “Blood and Soil;” 14; 88; and the “echo,” those three nested parentheses denoting the thing contained within is (((Jewish))). But it should be noted that the echo has also been coopted by Jews and is often used ironically. Schroeder is right to be concerned about teenagers using those phrases. But including the phrases “SJW,” “snowflake,” and “triggered” in that laundry list only fans the flames of hysteria and undermines Schroeder’s already dubious credibility.

    The first word I heard was “triggered,” and that’s a tough one. You may hear this from your conservative uncle, and you may also hear this from a kid who’s getting a lot of alt-right messaging online, and that’s everyone’s too sensitive today. -Schroeder, CNN interview

    About the term “triggering” – Schroeder seems unaware that the term was originally a legit feminist term, explained to us back in June, 2015, by Gillian Brown on that unimpeachably feminist website Everyday Feminism. That the term has been so thoroughly co-opted by relentless parody that she is only familiar with its ironic usage must be as disappointing to Schroeder as having her lack of familiarity with feminist rhetoric exposed.

    This guy understood the role of media in creating moral panics all the way back in 1964. He would have referred to Schroeder as a “moral entrepreneur.”

    Schroeder does grudgingly acknowledge during her CNN interview that not all those “words to watch for” are racist, but some are “gateways.” The slippery slope argument, hinted at. Just like Marijuana is a “gateway drug” and every person who takes a puff from a “reefer” will eventually end up a heroin addict. And then there is the slippery conflation of mere mockery with inevitable racism and homophobia, since according to the article the term Snowflake is used to mock people “especially [emphasis added] about issues impacting minorities.” SJW, we are informed, “is a term used to mock civil rights activists.”

    These terms are being used to mock and push back against the speech police, wannabe censors and their enablers such as Schroeder. The whole point of “triggering,” in the original usage anyway, is the conflation of speech with actual physical violence. This is unacceptable to those of use in the Liberty community, and moral scolds such as Schroeder must always be seen as enemies of free speech.

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    So very boring edition:  a week when the mails simply did not run

    Image result for happy illinois fan

    If you had Wisconsin imploding in Urbana (motto:  we’re no Carbondale), you could easily be writing a much heartier note than this right now.  Similarly, you were just a genius if you had Kansas hanging 48 on the Horns in Austin.  Ranked Missouri should have beaten 1-5 Vandy by 16 but lost by seven, but I didn’t see that one coming.  That is to say, there wasn’t much greatness going on in the pointy-ball prognostication world; and there was only a little news from our five posers from last week:

     

    Week Eight Most OverRated Football Program Results

    1          SMU toasted Temple and climbed two places.

    2          Minnesota razed Rutgers, now the best six-loss team in the game, and jumped four ranks!

    3          Appalachian State mangled Monroe, rose two spots, and still shouldn’t be ranked at all.

    4          Boise State scored a point a minute in the final quarter, still lost by three to toothless BYU, and fell eight spots in the AP.  The Broncos were the classic overrated (14th!) case where they don’t play anybody, the AP voters were forced to fill out 25 lines on their card, and someone vaguely remembered back before Obama when they were the badasses of Division 4 or so.  There really ought to at least be a fine for this sort of behavior.

    5          Oregon had to come back from ten down in the fourth to save themselves from the fish-flingers of Washington.  As Glibs discussed elsewhere this week, these are arguably a couple of 18-ish teams that should have finished in a dead heat, but it would have been funnier if the one ranked 25th had held on to edge the one ranked 12th instead of the other way around.  At least the Huskies come away with a firm grip on the title of best three-loss team in the nation.  Meanwhile the Ducks rose to the 11th spot, and we might soon need to concede that it’s earned . . . but lets wait a few weeks, shall we?

     

    So Boise was our sole toldjasos™ this week.  The season has pretty much stomped all the starch out of all the early bad ranking ideas already, and we’re running out of time to prove anything new.

    Meanwhile, where are we in our weekly idiocy?  Has the AP poll already stepped on every rake possible!?  Well, more less, yes:  it’s getting very quiet: 

     

    Yet Another Week N + 1 Most OverRated Football Programs

    1          Minnesota should make soup out of Maryland.

    2          Appalachian State will ruin the Jags of South Alabama

    3          SMU visits Houston where the entire team is redshirted.

    4          Oregon should beat Washington State by 10.

     

     

    Honorable mentions – We’ve already taken down Clemson and Wake; Wake is maniacally overrated even yet.  Notre Dame still shouldn’t be a top ten team, but I’ve been bored of this conversation for decades:  it just comes with the territory; I can confidently predict they will be ranked top ten at some point in the 2048 season; they will be top five in the sport a decade after Congress has entirely outlawed its play.  Cincinnati might prove out . . . we’ll see.  Arizona State fell seven places and is still grossly overranked, but this wasn’t funny earlier in the year when we rang them up the first time, and it still isn’t.  We already nailed Memphis, but they’re going to bob about the surface like a ripe corpse until deflating and then sinking back down to their destiny amongst the catfish.  Enough!  So how many heads do we have on the wall now?

     

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall

    1          Georgia lost at home to the second-best team from South Carolina

    2          Utah lost to an unrated USC but seems to be coming back

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    6          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt

    7          Iowa was no number 15 as Michigan proved, and they continue to be pantsed weekly

    7          Wake Forest allowed Louisville to hang 62 on them

    7          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    7          Boise State lost by three to toothless BYU

    11        Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    11        Memphis lost to possibly 80th best team in the nation Temple and disappeared

    11        Michigan State slowly fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    14        Clemson was dethroned by Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    14        Texas lost to the university of Texas at Norman (mid-season toldjasos™)

    14        Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU (early-season toldjasos™), but then they let Kansas hang 48 on them at home

    17        Auburn over-paid for losing to Florida

    17        Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn . . . or maybe not

    19        Washington State was de-ranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    20        Virginia continues to lose after losing to can-play-with-UGA Notre Dame

     

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU

    2          Oklahoma has gotten better all year and refused to lose to Texas

    2          Florida seems to have earned their status by defeating top-ten Auburn

    3          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    4          Michigan no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    5          Washington State no longer a blown call because UCLA

     

    Our year notches another WIN!!! and now grades out at 20-3-3.  So closes another week!

    links to older opinions:                  2019-10-17                 2019-10-10                  2019-10-03                  2019-09-26                  2019-09-19                  2019-09-13                  2019-09-06
    Disclosure of sources of bias:  your writer has attended the University of Tennessee, Memphis State and the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College . . . and he sleeps with an alumna of Georgia whose parents met at Washington State . . . and his son went to Houston . . . and he never met anyone from TCU he didn’t like . . . and he irrationally hates Notre Dame, UCF, Clemson, and Notre Dame.

     

  • Some horror movie picks for Halloween.

    It’s that time of year to settle in and throw in a horror film.  So, which ones should you watch? You could stick with Jaws, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Saw, Hellraiser (did you know they made 10 of them), Child’s Play, Scream, Halloween, or your favorite long running franchise.  Instead, I’m here with 7 of my favorite lesser known horror films, with some honorable mentions for some comedy horror films.

    HM: Zombeavers (2015)/Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)/My Name is Bruce (2007)

    Yes, three honorable mentions.  My article, my rules.

    All three of these are comedy/horror films with different target audiences.  Zombeavers targets the classic horror movie fans, using the standard tropes of the tales, but turning them around.  It’s about a toxic waste spill that turns a dam of beavers into bloodthirsty killers. Anyone bitten by them will eventually get sick and turn into one as well.  Do not expect high brow cinema going into this. The ending may very well kill Swiss, as they show another toxic waste spill, this time getting into a beehive (go ahead, so what the name of that one should be).

    Tucker and Dale vs. Evil targets the more casual horror fan.  Ever hear about killer rednecks and their murder cabins in the woods?  Then you know what you need to going into this movie. In this case, the two rednecks are just trying to get to their newly purchased vacation cabin and get it fixed up.  After a terrible attempt at flirting, some local college kids get creeped out and scared by them. Misunderstandings happen, college kids keep dying, and there’s even a woodchipper scene.

    My Name is Bruce targets the fans of the one (and only) Bruce Campbell.  In a small city, some kids fooling around in a graveyard unleash an ancient Chinese demon.  One of them is the worst kind of fanboy, thinking that Bruce is exactly like Ash from the Evil Dead movies and goes to recruit him to help.  If you don’t know who Bruce Campbell is, and have never seen the Evil Dead movies, go watch them instead.

    7th: The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

    Alright, into the serious ones.  Fair warning, this is a Spanish horror film done by Guillermo del Toro, so expect subtitles.  This is set at an orphanage during the last year of the Spanish Civil War. There’s great visuals, a creepy ghost, and the question of how can a child keep their innocence in the face of a terrible war.  It’s thematically similar to Pan’s Labyrinth, but didn’t get the widespread acclaim. If you haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth, then see that one as well.

    6th: Cube (1997)

    This one you may have heard of, it’s a bit old at this point, but I’m still a fan.  It’s a relatively low budget film that hides it pretty well. A group of people wake up, all in different rooms, all wearing the same clothes, and not remembering how they got there.  The room is a cube, with a door in each side (top and bottom as well). As they move through the rooms, they learn that some are trapped, and work to try to figure out the pattern, and what the hell is going on.  This movie did spawn a sequel and a prequel which don’t quite match the same WTF quotient as the original (in my opinion at least).

    5th: Identity (2003)

    This one uses two familiar premises: opening in media res, and a bunch of travelers getting stranded in a hotel (including a prisoner).  People get assigned rooms, and try to settle in for the night. Someone (or something) has other plans. People start dying, and room keys are left by their bodies that don’t match the rooms the people were in.  Then the bodies start disappearing.  The two premises then get introduced to each other in a fairly novel way.

    4th: Drag Me To Hell (2009)

    Sam Raimi did this one.  If you don’t know who Sam Raimi is, I’ll direct you up towards My Name is Bruce up above.  Raimi was making cult films before he hit the big time with the first Spider Man trilogy. (fun fact: the same Delta 88 has been in almost all of his films).  Drag Me To Hell was his return to horror after the Spider Man trilogy, and he revels in it. A loan officer at the bank is forced to tell a gypsy that the bank can’t extended their mortgage again.  The gypsy curses the poor bank worker, and things start taking a turn to the dark. As they learn more about it, the curse is set to have the loan officer dragged to hell after three days. Lots of blood and gore in this one, don’t watch it if you’re squeamish.

    3rd: In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

    This is probably the best representation of Lovecraft put to cinema.  It’s about an insurance investigator who needs to find out what’s going on with a missing author.  The author is due to submit a new book to the publisher, who took out a multi-million dollar policy against him disappearing.  The insurance investigator believes it’s all a publicity stunt, and parts of it started out that way, until something from outside found a way to use the author to get into this world.  Then it becomes a reality bending story wrapping around in on itself, and managing to swallow its own tail at the end.

    2nd: The Babadook (2014)

    This is one you are the most likely to have heard of, it made a big splash when it came to Netflix.  This tells the tale of a widowed mother raising a six year old by herself. The kid in this movie is a piece of shit as only a six year old can be.  One day, he comes into his mom’s room and asks mom to read him a storybook he found called Mister Babadook. Mister Babadook tells the story of a monster (can you guess his name?) that torments people who learn of his existence.  Strange things start happening in the house, mom blames the kid, the kid blames the Babadook. From this point, things begin to escalate.

    1st: Trick ‘r Treat (2007)

    Time for my favorite cult horror film, one that’s perfect for Halloween.  Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film telling several interwoven tales that take place in a small town (in Ohio, which seems to be a hotspot for horror movie franchises), with a little boy (known as Sam) witnessing most of the events.  Most of the stories deal with the rules and traditions of Halloween, with those violating them getting punished in some manner. There’s ghost stories, the reason for the jack-o-lanterns, poisoned candy, the proper time to take down the decorations, and what happens to those who don’t give out candy at all?  There’s been rumors of a sequel to this move for over a decade, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

    So there’s some of my.favorite horror films to watch.  If I left out your favorite cult film, I may not have seen it (or I may not have considered it cult enough to write it up).  I’ve tried to stay with films that you can easily find to rent, purchase, or stream (otherwise Cemetery Man would be in this list).  I also tried to stay away from the usual slasher films (Urban Legends would fit here), or ones that go too far into sci-fi (Event Horizon would go here).  Go ahead and tell me how wrong I was in the comments.

  • Pascal’s Wager

     

    For those unfamiliar with Blaise Pascal, he was a brilliant 17th century French mathematician who is famous for many contributions including Pascal’s Wager.  Lifted from Wikipedia, “Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in hell).”  In my childhood I had been admonished with similar arguments and it always struck me as artificially binary.  Let us examine some other possible outcomes to this game of life.

    Scenario one (the most rosy scenario):  god exists and you believe.  The assumed payout is going to heaven and living for eternity.  Pascal assumed an infinite good, but is he correct?  Perhaps endless bliss for eternity could be appealing to some, but the idea makes me weary.  I don’t want to go on for an infinite amount of time.  What makes life special is that it is fragile, fleeting and rare.  If I learned anything from Zardoz, it is that being an eternal sucks.  

    Scenario two:  god exists and you didn’t believe or believe correctly.  The punishment for guessing wrong is an eternity of hell.  Pascal assumed this as an infinite bad.  Again, anything for an eternity gets boring.  I only have so many orifices in which a pineapple can be forcibly inserted.  

    Scenario three:  belief in a god and no afterlife.  No harm, no foul.  Pascal assumed you only forgo a few luxuries and pleasures to follow his religion, but that is too narrowly focused.  How many people struggle with who they are because their religion tells them they are imperfect sinners and they need to atone with money and supplication?  Different religions demand different amounts of sacrifice of time and money, so I won’t dwell on the details, but the costs are not insignificant.  Suffice to say that money and time diverted to religious purposes is wasted if the religion is incorrect.

    Scenario four:  you don’t believe in god and there is no afterlife.  You get to be responsible for your own life and choices.  There is no hope for a deus ex machina.  There is no cosmic justice or divine inspiration.  No fellow travelers or community to share your burdens. There is no moral objection to debauchery, but there are social consequences.  Cheating on a spouse will usually end a marriage.  Heavy drug use will cost you a job.  Being a dick still gets you uninvited to parties.  Shame, guilt and feelings of inadequacy are just as painful when generated internally versus externally.  The only benefit of atheism is freedom to define your own morality.

    These are the four possible outcomes of Pascal’s Wager:  god exists/faith, god exists/no faith, no god/faith and no god/no faith.  This is where I take issue with the wager.  It simplifies religion/god into a binary, when there are countless religions and beliefs that are all in opposition to one another.  The choice isn’t really god vs no god, the choice is a rejection of all religions or choosing one of thousands.  Even limiting the thought experiment to the most popular religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, you only have a twenty percent chance of picking correctly.  One in five odds to gamble eternity.  This assumes all Christian denominations are interchangeable even though there are dozens from which to choose.  Even in Islam, which prides itself on fidelity to the word, you must chose between Sunni and Shia.   Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Vajrayana Buddhism are all competing for your attention.  Hinduism brings its own complexities with polytheism.  Which of the gods are real?  All?  Some?  None?  How do you know which to make an offering?  I haven’t even scratched the surface of the old gods and long forgotten religions.  Choosing any of these religions is de facto rejection of all others.  You haven’t really placed a wager of god vs no god, you have placed a wager of one belief vs thousands of other choices.  

    Pascal was clearly brilliant, but he engaged in a practice I find disturbing and increasing in modern society.  He took a complex decision and condensed it into right versus wrong.  His wager assumed Christianity or atheism was the correct answer and never considered that they could both be wrong.  Alternatively, they could both be correct.  There is no way of knowing if what you believe when you are alive, shapes your fate after death.  It is a debate with no possible resolution.  

    Modern wagers aren’t all about religion, but they do suffer from the same limited mindset.  Activists still frame complex problems in a simple binary matrix.  Abortion, homelessness and crime are issues that require real thought and nuanced thinking.  However, people claim there are simple solutions to these complicated issues.  Total abolition of abortions versus absolute choice until birth.  Giving the homeless a home versus chasing them out of the city.  Rehabilitation of convicts versus a police state.  I understand this desire to simplify the world.  We all want to do the right thing, but what is right is not often clear.  Everything has costs and benefits and even those are subjective for every individual.  Knowing what is right is difficult because we are all working with imperfect knowledge.  What troubles me is the people who are so certain that they are on the right side of history.  There is a smugness that comes with absolute faith that they are correct.  It leads to polarization and divides too deep to bridge.  Othering people leads to dehumanization and makes violence that much easier.  I only ask you to consider that when encountering people with different beliefs and ideas, do not dismiss them out of hand.  Just because you listen doesn’t mean you have to agree or change your position.  Everyone is not good or bad, wrong or right, but they are humans trying to make their way through a chaotic world.  Life is a cosmic crap game.  We hold our collective breath as the dice bounce, praying we placed our wager wisely.

    “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”

    – H. L. Mencken