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But, plug?

Here’s a piece from Cato fellow Jerry Taylor on the hype for plug-in hybrid cars:

Of course, if [plug-in hybrids] really were the wave of the future, there would be no need for ranting in Washington — automobile manufacturers would be busy making them as we speak. It’s only when corporate America is cool to an idea that the prophets turn to the taxpayer or the regulator. This illustrates Taylor’s law — “the commercial merit of any particular technology is inversely related to the degree of political tub-thumping heard in Washington for said technology.”

Here’s the issue I have with these proposed cars: just because they use less gasoline doesn’t mean they’re better, because their power still has to come from somewhere. “Plug-in” doesn’t mean its power miraculously appears from a wall-socket. It means that the electricity infrastructure has to deliver power to keep a car going. Given that we’ve received plenty of alarms about how The Grid is doomed to collapse as our electricity demands keep rising — and that a large portion of that electricity is generated by burning coal — I don’t get how plug-in cars are going to “solve our oil addiction” without creating even greater problems.

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2006-2007 NFL Playoff Challenge, round 1: the post-mortem

It’s never a good feeling to get up in the morning and find that one of your favorite writers just called you out like a bitch. But I deserve it, not having gone online yesterday to explain my horrific weekend of NFL picks.

On Saturday night, my brother said, “A game can be played horribly, but still be exciting.” This was moments before Tony Romo botched the hold on the potential game-winning field goal for the Cowboys. He was right; the ‘Hawks and the ‘Boys played like crap, but at least the game came down to the final minute. Unfortunately, this level of excitement didn’t make up for my call that Seattle would cover the 7-point spread (actually, I predicted a 21-point win, but hey).

Similarly, the Giants ignored the conventional wisdom that they’d quit on their coach, and busted their butts in their game against the Eagles, coming up short by 3 points, instead of the 7+ that I would’ve needed for a cover.

But my biggest mistake was going with the Jets outright. I thought it’d be a 17-14 finish or thereabouts, but it turned into a late rout, because the Pats are That Good. What’s funny is that, in both 2004 and 2005, I wrote on this very site, “Never bet against Bill Belichick.” Clearly, the fact that I didn’t reiterate this in 2006 doomed me to failure last weekend.

So I ended the weekend 1-3 against the spread, while Ron Rosenbaum went 2-2 in our Playoff Challenge (we both called the Colts cover correctly, even though we both blew our call that Larry Johnson would run wild for KC). Still no word on what should actually be at stake on this run. I’d offer up that the loser hosts a Superbowl party at his home, but we’re already planning on throwing one here at palatial VM Estates, so that’s out (on the plus side, you’re invited!).

Anyway, this Saturday morning, we’ll both post our second-round picks, based on Thursday’s betting line from the NY Daily News. Ron contends he’s also going to hazard a guess on what Philip Roth’s picks would be, even though I don’t think he’s aware of the, um, odd history I have with Mr. Roth (I’ll fill you in on that story sometime).

(Oh, and you guys should all pick up Ron’s newest book, The Shakespeare Wars, for two reasons: it’s a wonderful exploration into the wonder of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, and if enough people buy it, I’ll be able to say that NYTimes best-selling author called me out like a bitch.)

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Answer me these questions three

On the way to the airport yesterday morning, we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts in Boonton. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve gone there on the way to Newark, but I’m going to have to quit that practice. As it turns out, their coffee is so impossibly hot that I only get to drink four or five sips of it by the time I get to the airport. So I’ll need to find another one earlier en route.

But yesterday’s stop does give me occasion for the first official entry in the Overheard in Dunkin Donuts category of VM (I’ve retroactively added those other recent DD posts)!

I walked into the place around 6:45am. A workman (flannel shirt, jeans, boots) was in front of me on line. He finished his order and then asked the cashier, “My boss come in here already?”

“I don’t know. What’s he look like?”

“Short guy. Looks like a bridge troll.”

“Oh, yes! He was in about half an hour ago.”

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Balling

The itinerary for the first day of our St. Louis trip was as follows:

  1. 9:10am flight to St. Louis
  2. Land 11:30-11:45am
  3. Get baggage (we needed the full-sized suitcase to bring along the birthday presents for my niece) and rental car
  4. Get lunch at Amy’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Mai Lee
  5. Check into hotel
  6. Get to my brother’s school by 2pm so I can play basketball with him, a bunch of high school students, and another teacher.

Now, it was #6 that I found a bit problematic from the moment my brother proposed it. See, I haven’t picked up a basketball in at least three years, and I’m several days away from turning 36. I didn’t relish having to explain a massive sports-related injury to my coworkers next week.

Still, basketball was a secondary religion to me and Boaz, behind pinball. Since Bo knows he’ll never be able to top my pinball-achievements, I figured it’d be fine for me to offer my sacrificial self up on the court this afternoon.

So while I packed last night, I pulled my high-tops from the closet, inspected them for scorpions or mice, and stuffed them away in the big suitcase, along with some shorts and a T-shirt. And today, five minutes after checking into the hotel, I headed out to get my ass beat by a bunch of 15-year-olds.

Funny thing: It turned out not to be so bad. I held my own on defense, managed to sky for some rebounds, and hit some wide-open jumpers, as well as a shot or two in traffic, from offensive rebounds. I was actually amazed that I could move as quickly as I did, and that I didn’t have any significant pain in my back. I guarded Boaz most of the time, except when I got tired and decided to stop chasing him through screens. He torched me, which was to be expected, but he was pleasantly surprised at how much life I showed on court. He also admired some of my defensive footwork and the ways I closed out some of his angles to the basket. I’m firmly convinced that all the basketball acumen I’ve picked up in the past year comes from reading Charley Rosen’s basketball column at FoxSports.com.

Anyway, I’m not tooting my own horn here, because I still sorta sucked. My passes were terrible, the release-point on my jumper is laughable, and I did a lot of “lurking” on offense, which is my strategy for avoiding getting the ball and having to make decisions. But still, it was a lot of fun, and I got back to my old basketball practice of sweating worse than Patrick Ewing.

It’s off to dinner with some of Amy’s friends tonight, then breakfast with another friend of hers tomorrow, before we have the birthday party for my niece on Saturday night. I don’t plan on getting back out on the court anytime soon, but it was nice to know I can still bust a 15-year-old with an elbow to the kidney during a back-screen.

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Shock the Monkey (with caffeine)

A few months ago, I wrote about a strange moment in a Dunkin Donuts on my morning commute. Today, I pulled in to another nearby DD on my way back from lunch, and a woman driving a Jaguar walked in ahead of me. She was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweater, with a plaid flannel shawl.

I stood behind her on line, and noticed that she had some sorta loose collar on her neck. It was red, with little silver buttons. A red, heart-shaped “dog tag” was hanging from it, on the back of her neck. It read

PET MONKEY
BILL IS
MY MASTER

I’m just gonna hide under my desk for a while.

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Cereal Killer

Back in November, I wrote about how I’ve boycotted the large-sized box of Wheaties at our local supermarkets because Alex Rodriguez is the featured athlete. At least I could get by with the 12-oz. box, since I had got no beef with Steve Nash.

It just got worse. I hit the supermarket this week and discovered that A-Rod is still the large-box athlete (I need to check the expiration dates on those boxes; is it possible that no one is buying them?), but the Nash-boxes are gone. The 12-oz. box of Wheaties now features . . . your WNBA champions, the Detroit Shock!

Seriously. It’s a team photo of a WNBA team, which would be bad enough. But the picture also includes the smiling faces of the team’s head coach and top assistant: Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn.

I’m goin’ back to Atkins.

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Low-res

Well, it looks like my New Year’s resolution of posting every day is already shot. That’s what I get for having a modicum of ambition.

Amy wrote about our quiet New Year’s Eve celebration over on her site: she cooked a nice meal, we watched Annie Hall & some South Park episodes, and we barely made it to midnight.

We “watched the ball drop” (huh-huh-huh) on Dick Clark’s show, if only to remind ourselves of our mortality during the celebration. Yesterday, Howard Stern read the overnight TV ratings for the New Year’s Eve shows. It turns out that a stroke-impaired Dick Clark still drew twice the audience that Carson Daly drew. Make your own joke.

I didn’t really think up any good resolutions for this year, outside of the aforementioned “post interesting stuff every day” one. It’d be nice if I could keep up with my correspondences with my far-flung friends; I tend to let those slide when work gets too pressing, and it bothers me, because I pride myself on being a good friend.

I would resolve to keep up with the self-taught yoga I started practicing this fall, but that’s just a continuation of something I’m already doing. Howzabout: “I resolve to post a picture of me holding the standing bow-and-arrow pose”? Maybe not this extreme a hold, but hey.

I don’t think there’s any reading resolutions I can make. I’ve read an awful lot of books in recent years, and I’m happy with my ability to stick with significant works like Proust and that Robert Moses biography. If anything, I might actually slacken my reading this year, or at least finish fewer books, because I’m hoping to get started writing a work of fiction this year, and that’s going to necessitate more research-reading and less novel-reading.

Which, of course, opens a whole can of worms for me. I’ve been hemming and hawing about writing fiction for a decade-plus. Mainly it’s because I’m afraid I’d actually suck at it, although I’ve come up with lots of other excuses to keep from trying. I’ve received plenty of encouragement from laymen and established writers alike, but I’ve tormented myself pretty neurotically. I mean, “flat-out crippled myself,” actually.

So here’s my resolution: stop doing that, and start writing a novel. Or collection of interconnected short stories. Whatever.

In closing, here’s a piece from A German Requiem, one of Philip Kerr’s detective novels:

I thanked him and left him to his Engineer of Urban Conduits and Conservancy. That was presumably what you called yourself if you were one of the city’s plumbers. What sort of title, I wondered, did the private investigators give themselves? Balanced on the outside of the tram car back to town, I kept my mind off my precarious position by constructing a number of elegant titles for my rather vulgar profession: Practitioner of Solitary Masculine Lifestyle; Non-metaphysical Inquiry Agent; Interrogative Intermediary to the Perplexed and Anxious; Confidential Solicitor for the Displaced and Misplaced; Bespoke Grail-Finder; Seeker After Truth. I liked the last one best of all. But, at least as far my client in the particular case before me was concerned, there was nothing which seemed properly to reflect the sense of working for a lost cause that might have deterred even the most dogmatic Flat Earther.

Alright, maybe that’s too depressing a note upon which to start the year. Since my iTunes just shuffled up a “duet” of sorts with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Lori Carson, I’m going to share something from that. It’s about seven minutes of the Khan’s qawwali chanting, followed by a few moments of Lori’s breathy reading of some lyrics by Rumi:

The door is open

Let the beauty we love be what we do

Don’t go back to sleep

Don’t go back to sleep