Google Video has the movie 1984 in it's archives now. It's an hour and fifty minutes. I watched the first thirty minutes and stopped. My wife is going to hook her laptop up to the TV downstairs and we're going to watch it from the beginning this evening.
Diary writer jagsbball41 over at John Sickel's Minor League Baseball has an entry on a self-induced change in Barry Zito's pitching motion. His info was gleaned from espn.com. The change has his pitching coach sounding a little nervous,
"He's gone from one extreme to another from a pitching standpoint," (Dave) Righetti said after San Francisco's pitchers and catchers finished their initial workout. "His ball flight is going to be different, no doubt about it."
Initial fears are that his new delivery will cut down on the break of his classic 12 to 6 curveball and also wear down his body quicker. Conversely, the consensus in the thread is that Zito has tweaked his delivery from time to time during his career and that he's never suffered from those changes.
Twenty years back the Soviet Union was nearing the end of their disastrous military involvement in Afghanistan. Today, Soviet veterans of that war shake their heads when talk turns to the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. In what has become a classic example of history repeating itself these veterans have a simple message to the Americans: Get out now.
An example of Soviet propagandizing, or rather, covering up the true nature of the Soviet invasion to their own people can be read in the following passage from Alexander Golts:
I just came across this series of baseball articles from ESPN. Called Hot Stove Heaters this series of twenty-five articles covers a variety of general subjects in a very specific way.
For instance, under the January 30th article named Innovation, Jayson Stark takes a look at the flourishing of the iPod in Major League clubhouses in just the past twelve months.
I disagree with Phil Rogers' conjecture that the Angels may have the best outfield in 2007. The triumvirate of Garrett Anderson, Gary Matthews Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero may well have a very solid offensive season but two-thirds of this outfield are huge question marks. Anderson is currently on the downward slope of his career as the 34 year-old has posted OPS-plusses of 137, 105, 99 and 98 the past four season. Don't expect him to jump back up to a 130 OPS+ ever again. Oddly, later in the article Rogers notes that Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are on the downsides of their careers -- and Anderson isn't?
Gary Jr. of course had his breakout year in '06 but it was at the age of 31 and his OPS+ was still just 119. Again, one can't expect that a player with his career profile is going to far exceed that OPS again.Rolling Stone Magazine takes aim at their list of the Ten Worst Congressmen. Before I pulled up the list my guess was that the Pro-Democrat mag would contain eight Republicans. Alas, I was wrong as there were nine!
The cool thing here, though, is the picture tranformations that can be initiated for each congressman. Where else can Ned Flanders, Archie Bunker and Tom Tancredo be seen together in one place?
From Sports Illustrated come twenty spring training pics of March's past. Pic four shows the Cincinnati Reds running sprints in 1972. There is visible laughter on the faces of three of Pete Rose's teammates as Rose (with his own wry grin) is hustling his way through the obligatory spring sprints. One can imagine the possibility that Rose has just said something crudely humorous.
This fight was the one that setup George Foreman's epic showdown with Muhammad Ali the following year in Zaire. His man-handling of the formidable Joe Frazier made Foreman the baddest man on the planet.
In round one George Foreman throws Joe Frazier around like a rag doll all the while pounding on him. In round two he simply goes in for the kill and TKO's him with a flurry of vicious crosses to the head.
Frazier's knocked down multiple times with the knockdowns at 4:35 and 5:15 especially devastating.
It will be greatly exciting to watch the economies of Eastern Europe continue to evolve over the decades as the vestiges of Communist rule fall further and further back from the collective conscience of the Slavic people.
One such place in this part of the world with a good opportunity for economic advancement is the newly formed Montenegron state. Officially independent in the summer of 2006, this largely homogenous and small state is looking to harness its young entrepreneurial class to increase their standard of living and move full-bore into modernity.
The Mercatus Policy Series has written a brief on this very subject in its current publication. At the bottom of the short article you can find the link to the PDF.
Future success by Montenegro can further bolster the argument that smaller states can be just as economically viable, free and industrious as the large mega nation-states of the 20th century.
Polyphasic Sleep, as explained in its Wikipedia entry, is "achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 20-45 minutes throughout the day". While little scientific research has been done on the subject, a subculture of bloggers have taken to testing this odd sleeping pattern.
Steve Pavlina is one such blogger who has written an intensely detailed number of blog entries regarding his foray into polyphasic sleep over the course of a ninety day period.
Scary stuff from Representative Charlie Rangel. The short of it is that all US citizens between the ages of 18 and 42 would be required to serve their country for two years in a military or domestic service role.
The John Birch Society has a nice rejoinder to the totalitarian bill that Rangel wishes to pass.
The Mises Institute has begun a Print-on-Demand section in their on-line store. Alerted to the fact that numerous readers of their free on-line PDF's actually wanted hard copies for easy chair use the fine folks at the Institute created this nifty little device to satisfy their demands. The prices strike me as quite reasonable.
