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Wednesday, Apr 28, 2004
meet the mutts
"One move won’t do it—the current club has a pallid offense and too many declining veteran pitchers. The Mets must follow a comprehensive plan that incorporates the club’s financial wherewithal (annual revenue estimated at $158 million), the primacy of a strong farm system (cheap parts allow extraordinary flexibility), and the demands of the New York market. Raving yahoos on WFAN—“Trade Tyler Yates for Vladimir Guerrero!”—have no idea how complex reworking a baseball roster in the Moneyball age can get; from luxury taxes to arbitration schedules, carping press-boxers to union grievances, this isn’t some office rotisserie-league team where you just add up the stats. Plausible moves might not get your heart pounding right now, but they are the only way to eventually defibrillate this franchise."via primer
Monday, Apr 26, 2004
lets goo crazy
"Of course, Google's current value stems from the founders' willingness to rethink methods of how to search Web pages, at a time when many Internet experts thought that problem had been solved. And the company now appears to be looking at extending its business in ambitious ways, like a new e-mail service for consumers. But the ambitions of the Google founders wander further afield. They have talked about building space transporters and implanting chips in people's heads that can provide them with information as they think."
state mints
all politics aside, if this is what the council on foreign relations thinks, this is what kerry thinks.
slam dunce
isnt it endlessly ironic that the man who 30 years ago asked, who will be the last man to die for a mistake, cant bring himself to make that same query now?
Sunday, Apr 25, 2004
bandied about
bob woodward and prince bandar are on meet the tim this morning. also check out the richard clarke op-ed in the times.
Thursday, Apr 22, 2004
rum tum tugger
"A: I doubt it. … We're going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript when you publish it. We'll give you a—I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree with that so we're going to have to—I don't want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too."
short shrift
"Page 281: On Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy: "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.""
bribes r us
"The secret-ferreting doesn’t stop there. Mr. Woodward invites the reader along when an Arabic-speaking C.I.A. spook nicknamed "Tim" slips across the Turkish border into Iraq with a truck full of loot to recruit spies. "They were carrying tens of millions of dollars in U.S. $100 bills stored in black Pelican boxes, heavy cardboard boxes with hinges that are often sold in art stores," Mr. Woodward recounts. "Tim had to sign for his share. In the end he had been advanced $32 million, and he would have to present vouchers to account for it all. Yellow, 3-by-3 Post-its signed by the paid agents would suffice, he hoped. When the others lost sight of Tim’s vehicle on the way in, they joked that he probably was heading for the Riviera. Tim had found that $1 million in $100 bills weighed 44 pounds and fit neatly into a day backpack.""
Wednesday, Apr 21, 2004
barn dour
""I don't think anybody from the State Department would ever have intended to cast aspersions on Pottery Barn's commitment to customer service.""
designated driver
"Faced with a chronically less popular product than the National League, and a major deficit in hitting and scoring, following the 1972 season the American League was ready to take bold action; one might even call it an act of desperation. The AL voted to conduct an "experiment" with the Designated Hitter rule in 1973. Jerome Holtzman in the Sporting News Baseball Guide aptly described it: "The most significant rule change in modern baseball history.""