I got a chance to see Nora Graves, Eric and Amy's first, on Christmas Day. I also got to try out this nice consumer camera I bought, thanks to saved BestBuy Gift Cards. I like fast, easy, and versatile, and gift cards really fit the bill.
Pics are up on my website, please click the title for the linky. I'm still working on posts about Scoop Jackson and the Iraq Funnel Disruption. But in the meantime, Happy New Year!
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Linda caved...
Thought so. Probably shoulda posted a follow-up. but anyway...
Once baseball started to make softer, "let's work this out" overtures, I figured a deal could get done, but didn't post that thought. I guess I preferred to wait-and-see how it turned out.
The original deal stands. Here are the changes: D.C. will seek, but not require, partial private financing. Major League Baseball (MLB) agreed to waive the $19 Million/year penalty for delays, accepting waiving the new stadium's rental fee ($5.3 Million/year) instead. They also agreed to split the cost of cost-overrun insurance (man, you can insure anything these days).
The dynamic, in retrospect, was simple: both sides realized, after a suitable round of posturing, that they both needed the deal. Linda Cropp didn't want to go down as the Woman Who Drove Away Baseball. MLB, having cast it's lot with D.C., destroyed it's leverage with other cities. Hence, they weren't going to get anywhere near the sweetheart deal that D.C. could (and did) give them. So, she backed off the (deal-breaking) private financing requirement, and MLB agreed to waive certain cost-overrun protections, as well as accept private financing, if it can be arranged.
Everybody claims victory. How very D.C. And we get to pay for it. Oh goodie, oh joy. And as for me, I'm thinking Baseline Lower Reserved...
Once baseball started to make softer, "let's work this out" overtures, I figured a deal could get done, but didn't post that thought. I guess I preferred to wait-and-see how it turned out.
The original deal stands. Here are the changes: D.C. will seek, but not require, partial private financing. Major League Baseball (MLB) agreed to waive the $19 Million/year penalty for delays, accepting waiving the new stadium's rental fee ($5.3 Million/year) instead. They also agreed to split the cost of cost-overrun insurance (man, you can insure anything these days).
The dynamic, in retrospect, was simple: both sides realized, after a suitable round of posturing, that they both needed the deal. Linda Cropp didn't want to go down as the Woman Who Drove Away Baseball. MLB, having cast it's lot with D.C., destroyed it's leverage with other cities. Hence, they weren't going to get anywhere near the sweetheart deal that D.C. could (and did) give them. So, she backed off the (deal-breaking) private financing requirement, and MLB agreed to waive certain cost-overrun protections, as well as accept private financing, if it can be arranged.
Everybody claims victory. How very D.C. And we get to pay for it. Oh goodie, oh joy. And as for me, I'm thinking Baseline Lower Reserved...
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Ego, thy name is Linda Cropp
Well, the kangaroo court that is the D.C. City Council has struck again. This revolting menagerie of maniacal genetic misfits has deigned to weigh in on the D.C. Nationals Baseball Stadium deal.
And they killed it.
D.C. has been waiting thirty three years to get a baseball team back, and now the window is shutting, forever. The deal was to be financed by bonds that would be repaid by local businesses and a special sales tax within the stadium. No hit to the taxpayers in DC. In fact, DC finally has a long-dreamed-of commuter tax. Voluntary, natch.
Linda Cropp is a silly vain peahen.
Her acolytes, led by Marion (Goddamn bitch set me up) Barry, don't understand the dynamics of the deal. Baseball does not want to move to DC!
Moving to DC gives away the leverage that only The Bigge$t, Riche$t City Without a Baseball Team affords them. To purchase that leverage from baseball, DC needed money. First, you need to have so much money on the table that pretenders like Portland and Norfolk fade into the woodwork. Then you've got to pay off Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Then you need to pay off the other 28 owners, who are looking for a big payday. The bottom line: about $440 Million.
Baseball has given DC until January 1, 2005 to get it's act together. I feel so sick, I could cry.
And they killed it.
D.C. has been waiting thirty three years to get a baseball team back, and now the window is shutting, forever. The deal was to be financed by bonds that would be repaid by local businesses and a special sales tax within the stadium. No hit to the taxpayers in DC. In fact, DC finally has a long-dreamed-of commuter tax. Voluntary, natch.
Linda Cropp is a silly vain peahen.
Her acolytes, led by Marion (Goddamn bitch set me up) Barry, don't understand the dynamics of the deal. Baseball does not want to move to DC!
Moving to DC gives away the leverage that only The Bigge$t, Riche$t City Without a Baseball Team affords them. To purchase that leverage from baseball, DC needed money. First, you need to have so much money on the table that pretenders like Portland and Norfolk fade into the woodwork. Then you've got to pay off Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Then you need to pay off the other 28 owners, who are looking for a big payday. The bottom line: about $440 Million.
Baseball has given DC until January 1, 2005 to get it's act together. I feel so sick, I could cry.
Creation and Evolution
This is adapted from my post to a thread on Polipundit's web site. The ACLU was at it again, and it proved to be a hot-button issue, with over 150 posts. Since most of them were quite good, I commend the whole thread to you. This post's title is a link to the thread. I hope you enjoy...
It seems to me that Creationists and Evolutionists aren't fighting over the facts, nor the implications. This fight isn’t about genomes and verses, laws and courts. It’s about fear. Evolutionists fear backsliding into the depths of ignorance and superstition. Creationists fear losing our ability to understand and control what we’ve learned, what we’ve wrought. They also fear that we’re creating a new form of superstition, that losing one form of ignorance only begets another, one we’re ill equipped to understand, never mind control.
Each is afraid of a simple statement: "I don't know." “I don’t know” what happens when we start reaching the irreducible markers, “proof points” if you will, of Divine Creation. “I don’t know” what happens to Faith when the mechanisms of thought are duplicated outside the human mind.
“I don’t want.” As a Creationist, “I don’t want” the Wondrous Void boxed up in a helter-skelter welter of dissertations, equations, and conferences. As an Evolutionists “I don’t want” to halt the quest. For God, ironically. But no, it isn’t about God, either.
I have a little pet theory. My theory is that God, in our daily lives, is about our relationship to our selves, our family, our village, our tribe, our nation, and the World at large. Determining the composition of lightning only tangentially affects our appreciation for, and relationship with, The Divine. I don’t believe that either needs to concede much to the other, for they address separate concerns. For example, even if we deduce the mechanisms of thought, how do we explain Free Will? Probability theory only goes so far, after all.
It seems to me that Creationists and Evolutionists aren't fighting over the facts, nor the implications. This fight isn’t about genomes and verses, laws and courts. It’s about fear. Evolutionists fear backsliding into the depths of ignorance and superstition. Creationists fear losing our ability to understand and control what we’ve learned, what we’ve wrought. They also fear that we’re creating a new form of superstition, that losing one form of ignorance only begets another, one we’re ill equipped to understand, never mind control.
Each is afraid of a simple statement: "I don't know." “I don’t know” what happens when we start reaching the irreducible markers, “proof points” if you will, of Divine Creation. “I don’t know” what happens to Faith when the mechanisms of thought are duplicated outside the human mind.
“I don’t want.” As a Creationist, “I don’t want” the Wondrous Void boxed up in a helter-skelter welter of dissertations, equations, and conferences. As an Evolutionists “I don’t want” to halt the quest. For God, ironically. But no, it isn’t about God, either.
I have a little pet theory. My theory is that God, in our daily lives, is about our relationship to our selves, our family, our village, our tribe, our nation, and the World at large. Determining the composition of lightning only tangentially affects our appreciation for, and relationship with, The Divine. I don’t believe that either needs to concede much to the other, for they address separate concerns. For example, even if we deduce the mechanisms of thought, how do we explain Free Will? Probability theory only goes so far, after all.
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