T.D.

Happy Birthday! :party:

I got a copy of Ronan Bennett's Zugzwang (via interlibrary loan), and it's really good. Serious chess themes, as indicated in Chessbase's interview and event coverage. Nevertheless, I might not have ordered it had I known more of Mr. Bennett's bio (see the latter link above). He's from Belfast, and seems to have been deeply involved with the IRA, although he was acquitted of two serious charges. [i'm of Irish Catholic descent, but by no means down with the IRA...] That said, I strongly recommend the book to chess/fiction enthusiasts.

Well, at least he's not calling the QB gay, a la Garcia...

I once read a George Soros quote (unfortunately, I've never been able to find the exact source) about the importance of "riding the false premise as long as possible"...

Tony Hrkac Kent Hrbek Hristo Stoichkov

It blows my mind that shameless corrupt shill Henry Blodget actually has a column on Slate. Does anyone read that shite? [i couldn't bring myself to; skipped over the HB passages in above post.]

Good porn title. Exactly what I was going to say, but my PC antenna suppressed the post...

I hope you didn't lay the 26 points, or whatever the spread was. Re. the Miami victory, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy than Brian Billick.

Arnold Ziffel Lester Piggott The Empress of Blandings

Yeah, great stuff! Outstanding band, with Land, Perkins (little-recorded, one of my favorites), Butler and Sheldon. I rcommend Carl's Blues. I also have Sonority, which isn't as memorable but has three tunes with Gerald Wilson and Elmo Hope (another favorite).

Cool! Buffalo is the default TV team for me. Have had a power outage for a few hours (heavy wind as part of nor'easter), but it just came back on , thankfully. Will check out the game.

Very little surprise. As a long-time (once; don't really follow it any more) fan of "athletics" (track and field), which has no end of doping scandals, two very clear predictors of doping are (i) dramatic late-career (say, mid-30s) improvement and (ii) drastic physique change. (In US women's athletics, for instance, think Regina Jacobs for (i) and Flo-Jo for (ii)). Roger exhibits both. For (i), you can find lots of stories about his renascence after leaving the Red Sox to Duquette's comments that his skills had declined. For (ii), look at early vs. late career photos. There's plenty of illustration in media stories the past couple of days. One thing that really puzzles me is why multimillionaire ballplayers had personal trainers and clubhouse boys, who seem far from the brightest guys, supply and administer their drugs. Surely there are plenty of "Doctor Feelgoods" out there...When Outside Magazine ran their famous 2003 "Drug Test" article in which an amateur cyclist juiced up, the author was able to find a physician to administer the whole cocktail of doping products. I strongly recommend the linked article, btw!

Seems to me that the debate about anabolics, HGH, etc. is to some extent pissing in the wind. Within a generation or so, I think that "genetic doping" will be possible and widespread. That will totally change sports as we have known them, and big-time sports will be played by medically created cyborgs. I've been paying less attention to spectator sports, and focusing on my own personal fitness/participation.

I'm inclined to agree with you. But I don't think the Earl Weaver recipe of "pitching, defense and three-run homers" is that bad. The steroid age seems to really neglect defense. This could be a result of youngsters' lack of attention to fundamentals, or of roided-up players being too heavy and inflexible to play good D. Funny thing: Apparently, when modern "bulked-up" players look at video from the '70s and '80s, they laugh at the oldsters' physiques and refer to them as "stick men"...

Megan Marshack Mars Blackmon Shaka Zulu

Happy birthday! Sorry if this is lame/brief, but I didn't have time to read the whole thread. Many happy returns.

Is anyone really surprised by any of this s**t? I'm not. Given the money at stake, and the fact that the substances weren't even banned by MLB (even now, though they're formally banned, the testing protocol has loopholes you could drive a truck through), rational individuals would expect heavy dope usage. Clemens has long been an obvious doper, if you look at the typical "red flags" of body change and late-career improvement. I don't care for doping myself, and am glad they're "cracking down", but you'd have to be super-naive to believe that any professional sport doesn't have serious performance-enhancing substance issues. And for all those who today are decrying the drug use, what were you saying during the days of the Sosa-McGuire (two of the most obvious juicers ever seen outside pro wrestling) home run duel? It sure looked like MLB was complicit in the doping at that time. There's a heavy dose of hypocrisy out there... [Added:] Well, here's one plus, albeit of the "No shit, Sherlock" variety. Quoting the NYT story aloc linked to on the Hot Stove thread: Mitchell’s report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball will be highly critical of the commissioner’s office and the players’ union for tolerating the presence of drugs throughout years of abuse, a person who has read the closely guarded report said Wednesday.

I'm amazed at the degree of similarity among the various recommendation lists. It's essentially all Adams, Reich, Glass, with almost vanishingly few exceptions (a bow to Euro-orthodoxy with Ruders, Holland's token "adventurous" choices of Cage and Basie, and a sop to Riley with the well-known In C). I find this uniformity so improbable as to be almost bizarre; one gets the strong impression that the various critics represented: (i) listen to very little "minimalism"; (ii) don't much like it (otherwise they'd know more pieces); (iii) got to know what they've heard of the genre by plowing through similar lists of Adams/Reich/Glass seminal works [any overlap with Clem's imagery is purely intentional ]. You'd get orders of magnitude more diversity by soliciting recommendations for the core Austro-Germanic classical repertoire...

Mrs. Dalloway Cab Calloway Ely Callaway

The article makes some dubious statements. For instance: * From what I can tell the 12-tone technique is seldom adhered to strictly anymore. Dude, you're a prominent critic for The Gray Lady. You're supposed to effin' be able to tell! * For those unversed in music theory it may be worth explaining with a little more specificity what 12-tone music is and how it came about. Implying that the author is versed in music theory, in which case see the above objection. The gratuitous, incestuous flogging of Alex Ross's book also raised eyebrows...

The article's already (some time ago iirc) been ripped extensively on Gann's blog (looks like 7/4 linked there, but I didn't check). Typical of NYT and their recommended lists: the worst kind of mindless hyper-orthodox "name the biggest names" cataloguing of received values. I could go on, but Gann's already done so, and I can't match the bukkake imagery...

Doesn't matter....they'd just blow it on some Alex Smith-type anyway I doubt very much that they will keep the pick. They'll likely prefer to trade down for multiple picks or deferred picks. McFadden might be interesting, but I say they trade the pick away... Agreed. If the pick is top-three, the requisite signing bonus + salary package would likely cause salary cap problems for the Pats. I could see them going for volume in the draft, and saving the cap $ for free agents (or retaining veteran players). In addition to strong drafts, the Pats have been doing well with free agent signings the past couple of years. Many NFL clubs mess up in that area.

I like "Bylsma I", the earlier of his 2 sets that's now on Sony Essential Classics.

Had a very nasty ice storm here (upstate NY) last night. Repeat performances possible tomorrow and Thursday.

This issue (more or less) received an interesting treatment in Jorge Luis Borges's short story Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote. I recommend reading the story, but the "appropriation art" cited above has little or no interest to me.