Awesome Time

Today is January 21, which means that there is now officially less than a year until the end of the Bush Administration.

Granted, a year is still a hell of a long time, especially given the fever pitch of this election cycle, but it’s nice to take a moment and reflect that we have less than a year until our long national nightmare is over.

Of course, now we just need to hope (and make sure, by voting) that the light we see at the end of the tunnel is actually sunshine, and not the front of a train…

In honor of Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg commencing the eighth year of their ESPN radio morning show, the World Wide Leader staged a roast for them last Friday night in Las Vegas. According to the Atlantic City Press, it wasn’t just the backslapping circle jerk you’d expect. In fact, it was worse.

Take this nugget:

Luckily, rock-pop trio Lifehouse played a semi-acoustic set to open the evening, performing a 20-minute, hit-filled set that included “Hanging By a Moment,” “You and Me,” “Falling Even More In Love With You” and “Who We Are.” While short, the set was certainly sweet as frontman Jason Wade showed off his great vocal chops. It definitely added some value to the night

I guess “Train” was already booked. Does Lifehouse actually have a song called “Falling Even More In Love With You”? Or did the author just list “Hanging By A Moment” twice under a different name? I’m too lazy and ambivalent to Google it.

H/T as usual to Deadspin.

I am a non-partisan, issues-based voter, and I’m indifferent to most issues. I mean, sure, I have opinions, I just can’t seem to get as excited about Medicare benefits or an additional alcoholic beverage tax as other people seem to.

The result? I’ve never voted. To be fair, I was ineligible when then 2000 Presidential election rolled around, and I was registered to vote in PA while living in MD for about seven years, but there’s really no excuse. I’m lazy and indifferent. I plan on voting this November, but anything could happen.

The closest I ever came to voting was when (football hall-of-famer) Lynn Swann was running for Governor. As you may well remember, part of Swann’s campaign in Pittsburgh involved the endorsement of Isle of Capri in its bid for the local slots license, which would have meant $280 million in private funds for a new arena, which would have meant the Penguins would stay in town. And, if I needed any further reason to vote Republican, there’s always this. Governor Rendell, on the other hand, didn’t openly endorse any particular deal, but he was rumored to be chummy with Forest City Enterprises, who were campaigning for a Harrah’s casino in Station Square, and he was openly dubious about public funding for an arena (see: “Plan B”). I ultimately declined to vote. Swann ultimately got raped in the election. Don Barden (neither Harrah’s nor Isle of Capri) ultimately got the slots license, and proceeded to frustrate North Side residents with his intentions to build a 300-story garage on the waterfront. The Penguins managed to get a new arena deal regardless.

In retrospect, the Isle of Capri proposal was a really bad idea (except for the whole private arena funding aspect), and I’m glad that I didn’t vote. Proponents emphasized job opportunities and the fact that with private funding, more of the slots revenue could go towards development, but it involved putting a casino in the Hill. What a terrible idea. I’m supremely embarrassed that I supported it.

Furthermore, it seems now that Hill District residents are at risk of getting fucked over once again. Mayor Ravenstahl unveiled the plan for the Hill about a week ago, which included services and planned facilities (such as a new grocery store and YMCA) but included no revenue sharing agreement that would put dollars directly into the hands of Hill developmental groups. In essence, it would be totally unbinding. The proposal lacked even job guarantees for minorities at the new arena, causing even a die-hard Penguins fan such as myself to be dubious. Predictably, Hill District residents rejected the proposal (in dramatic fashion).

Seriously: Given the oft-recognized financial plight of our city, the predicted upcoming recession, and Mayor Ravenstahl’s (perceived) lack of sincerity, what are the odds that the new arena, which is scheduled to begin construction in the next few months, will materialize into any tangible benefits for the residents of the Hill District without something to make it binding?

I was going to write something longer about Gary Kamiya’s newest piece on Salon, but I can’t. Just go read it.

And while you’re at it, check out this piece at Group News Blog (which, again, I found through C&L) that deconstructs the Dem “Big Three” by their use of language.  Fascinating.

I came across an op-ed piece by William Poundstone in today’s New York Times that really opened my eyes on some methods for discouraging election fraud, especially when using electronic voting machines. Poundstone, author of the shortly-to-be-released Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It), highlights a system proposed by Drs. Warren D. Smith, a math professor at Temple, and Ronald L. Rivest, a professor of computer science at MIT who helped invent RSA encryption (he’s the ‘R’).

With computing power increasing exponentially, it’s continually getting easier for someone with enough computer knowledge (and you don’t need much) to break into an electronic voting machine and alter the vote counts. Even more worrisome is that the manufacturers of these machines don’t seem to be taking the security of our votes as seriously as they perhaps ought to. Remember the Diebold e-voting scandal from a few years ago? Unfortunately, even a simple paper record of how you voted is no defense against a fraud-minded election worker. It also doesn’t comfort those who prefer to keep their votes secret, and the secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of a good democracy. Or your ballot could simply be lost…

Who better, then, than two of the country’s finest minds in the field of cryptography and information security, to talk about a way to keep our elections secure? What Rivest and Smith have come up with is brilliantly elegant, pleasantly democratic, and ironically simple.

You don’t encrypt the machines. You throw the doors open on the whole system and make everyone an enforcer.

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I was doing my usual morning surf of the news and blogosphere, and I came across this clip on Salon that I just had to share here. I’ve always thought Jacques Pepin was a brilliant chef, and it turns out he’s generally a pretty interesting guy too. Enjoy.

Here’s some minor food for thought:

The Iowa Caucuses, “silly” though they may be, are the first real look we have at how the American people may vote come November. Polls are all well and good, but this was the first time in this election cycle where people actually took time out of their weekday to go and vote for a candidate for President. Iowa has also often been talked about as something of a swing state, so I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to look at the results as a possible microcosm of how the rest of the country might vote.

Now, keeping in mind that this is to be taken with a big grain of salt, I combined the Democratic and Republican vote counts (according to Wikipedia) into a single chart, and the result is pretty startling:

(h/t Hubris Sonic at Group News Blog for giving me the idea, and C&L, always my first stop in the world of political blogs, for finding the post)

I realize it’s January, and it’s the Iowa Caucus, and every other caveat you can think of, but in a year where both sides were breathless about record voter turnout, the combined totals were roughly 2 to 1 in favor of the Democrats. That’s even more amazing when you consider the fact that the Democratic caucus’s process is much more time-consuming and arcane than the Republican caucus.

If these results from Iowa turn out to be any kind of indicator about how the rest of the country will vote in November, the Republicans are toast.

One can only hope.

I love sports message boards. Initially I used to poke around the Pirates.com fan forum around the July 31 trade deadline, scoping for links to rumored deals. As I’ve gotten more into college sports, I’ve become a long time lurker of the Pitt basketball and football boards through Rivals.com.

While message boards get a bad rap, I’ve found they’re mostly a pretty good cross section of most amateur writing that you’ll find on the internet. There’s some very worthwhile opinions and analysis, a plethora of unfounded rumors, the occasional insider tidbit and then a lot of ranting that can degenerate into age-inappropriate personal attacks. In a sad way, this is what entertains me the most.

For example, over the holidays I came across a family friend whom I knew to be a regular poster on the football board. He’s a local accountant around my parents age who graduated from Pitt in the early 70s. When I asked him why he hadn’t written anything in a while, his cheeks got very flush, and he instinctively swallowed down his glass of wine in one gulp. “Oh you didn’t see?” he said. “I got into a spat.”

He then proceeded to tell me about how earlier in the season, another poster had called him out for his repeated criticism of running back Larod Stephens-Howling. After a few messages going back and forth with debating the relevance of various stats, the thread degenerated into something like this:

Family Friend: I’m not sure you know enough to figure out what channel the game’s on next week.

Other Guy: Whatever. Why don’t you go screw up some more tax returns?

Family Friend (Apparently shocked and appalled that this guy knew who he was and what he did for a living): I couldn’t concentrate. I was too stunned from when I saw you at a game last year and found out how fat your wife was.

Other Guy: That’s very mature. You just think you know everything about everything, don’t you?

Family Friend: Ain’t it the truth brother!

Then, realizing that the conversation had crossed some sort of line, and petrified that people knew who he actually was, Family Friend deleted the account. “I’m much happier these days that I’m not stressing out over the opinions of some guy who’s made over 5,000 posts to an internet site,” he told me.

I was reminded of that interaction when I clicked onto the Pitt message board today, after hearing that West Virginia had hired Bill Stewart as its new football coach. Stewart led the Mountaineers to a 48-28 thumping of Oklahoma last night, a dramatic win especially on the heels of former coach Rich Rodriguez’s departing for Michigan just weeks ago. Still, Stewart is a 30 year assistant coach without the pedigree or track record of most of the other candidates. The combination of the win and the hire seemed perfect for message board fodder. I wasn’t disappointed by what I found.

Like this thread about the West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin being on the sideline:

“Does the WV governor do anything except meddle in WVU football affairs?***”

“ I Read his Lips - He was trying to tell [WVU RB Noel] Devine that if he sticks around one more year he will qualify for his MBA.”

“Then he’ll have his MBA before his GED.”

What else is he gonna do? Shoot skunks, get lickered up, nuzzle his sister, propose to his dog?

Or this one, about FB Owen Schmitt’s post-game interview:

I gotta admit, when Schmitt started crying in his post-game interview…I started to get goose bumps. No matter how much you hate WVU, and I certainly do, you have to love seeing a kid who plays the game hard, leaves his guts on the field and loves his school and his state.

Re: I gotta admit, when Schmitt started crying in his post-game interview… He looks borderline retarded to me.

Hey, Schmidt was born with a cleft palette. Some online heroes amaze me. You know NOTHING about the kid and you say he looks borderline retarded. You sound like a straight out idiot and hardly borderline. How will you like it someday if you read on the internet some idiot calling your child borderline retarded? How old are you? 9?

Who cares about his disfigured mouth? He got a mohawk to distract from his mouth problem. I respect Schmitt and think he is a heck of a player. They interviewed a MAN on TV today named Owen Schmitt. A guy I would like on my team anytime. Patty, it’s now time to give your bj for three as your board name says.

Cleft “palette”, or rather “palate”???…Wow… Your enlightenment has finally after years allowed me to see how a disfigured mouth relates to Owen Schmitt’s mental retardation. I guess they’re both birth defects, but one is often the result of drug/alcohol use during pregnancy and the other is often the result of inbreeding—both of which would fit the mold of a model citizen of West Virginia. What the hell is your point again??? PS…I have all my teeth and visit the dentist every six months. How about you and yours?

Brilliant, right?

I was at one of my girlfriend Meghann’s friend’s apartments during a visit to Hagerstown recently when another friend of hers, a resident of Baltimore, denounced the arrival of Starbucks in her neighborhood as gentrification.

Disclaimer: I am not a topical person. I buy the newspaper to do the crossword and read selective sports articles, and I read the opinion section of the Sunday paper. As a rule I generally avoid meaningful reading due to my short attention span. That being said…

“Gentrification” is kind of an ugly word to be attached to chain stores we all know and love, given racial and class implications. I tried to discuss it with Meghann on the ride home from Hagerstown a couple of days ago, but she (understandably) leapt to her friend’s defense, and the result was more of a yelling match than a give and take sort of debate, as most arguments are.

I studied economics in college, and I probably got much less out of it than I should have. I took a bunch of macroeconomics classes, including several on economic development, but I’ll be the first to confess that I know next to nothing about it in the academic sense. However, it does seem to me that what Meghann’s friend affectionately referred to as gentrification is what many of the people who are making decisions see as development.

For example: We live on the border of East Liberty, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s East End. In the last five years, a number of chain stores (Borders, Whole Foods, and Starbucks, to name a few) have come into the area as a result of “urban renewal” projects. I’ve heard the area referred to as “up and coming.” It was a big market district back in the day, but in the 60’s and 70’s it kind of went to shit with the coinciding erection of low-income high rises and the failed Penn Circle and Motor Square Gardens experiments (see the Wikipedia entry for more details).

Are the arrivals of Whole Foods, Borders, and the like a good thing? Do they represent development? They certainly make the area more attractive to middle class white people, who have taken the area by storm. Money is coming into the area that wasn’t coming in before, along with jobs. This is arguably development, since the aggregate income of the area has increased. But isn’t there a problem if the process forces out the same poor black folk that ended up in the high rises 30 years ago when they were displaced by the erection of the Civic (now Mellon) Arena in the Hill District two miles down Centre Avenue? It is worth noting that part of the “urban renewal” projects is the demolition of that low income housing.

I’m certainly not saying anything new here. MacKenzie Carpenter wrote a pretty good article about the issue in the PG a couple of weeks ago. Some local black community groups are understandably unimpressed with the development, noting that there is little in the development geared to the African-American consumer.

Personally, I like the area. I feel like we live close to everything we need, which is nice. However, I’m pretty sure that an eventual result of the whole urban renewal process will be displacement (given rising housing costs and the destruction of existing low income housing), so I remain skeptical, and I understand where Meghann’s friend was coming from when she commented on the arrival of Starbucks.

Ladies and gentlemen, the site is up.  We are now officially on Awesome Time.