Hamster On A Piano (Eating Popcorn)

Loyal readers may recall that I endorsed Anuzis on this blog a few months ago.

Now, Smoltz has never pitched a season in the AL, but his dominating numbers, even into his later years, give me every reason to think that Smoltz might be a top 5 pitcher in the AL East.  As a Yankees fan, this worries me.  For a pittance, the Red Sox have added a veteran future Hall of Famer who’s not only underestimated because he for many years he pitched behind (in my mind) the best pitcher in history, Greg Maddux. [This is a topic for a longer post]

Smoltz’s last three full seasons look like this:
2005: 14-7, 169 K, 53 BB, 3.06 ERA, 1.145 WHIP with 229 2/3 IP
2006: 16-9, 211 K, 55 BB, 3.49 ERA, 1.190 WHIP with 232 IP
2007: 14-8, 197 K, 47 BB, 3.11 ERA, 1.182 WHIP with 205 2/3 IP
(obviously, before this, he was an elite closer, posting 144 saves from 2002-2004)
(in 2008, he only threw 28 innings, but in that short span he posted a 2.57 ERA with 36 K.)

Simply dominant.  I pray he doesn’t approach these numbers again.

His points?

As Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, “Numerous deleterious health consequences are associated with [marijuana's] short- and long-term use, including the possibility of becoming addicted.”

What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory. It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope?) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety. While many people smoke marijuana to relax, it can have the opposite effect on frequent users. And smoking anything, whether it’s tobacco or marijuana, can seriously damage your lung tissue

But I’m here to tell you, as a doctor, that despite all the talk about the medical benefits of marijuana, smoking the stuff is not going to do your health any good. And if you get high before climbing behind the wheel of a car, you will be putting yourself and those around you in danger.

I’m hardly in favor of legalizing pot, but I don’t know if these arguments distinguish marijuana usage from tobacco usage or alcohol use.

Bernstein then recounted a story about Al Gore:

He once sent his secret service detail to “ask” a friend of mine to leave his seat at a movie in D.C. “because you are sitting where the vice-president would like to sit.” For all you residents of the D.C. area, the proper response to a request like that is “well, then, the vice-president can just come over and ask me himself.”

A commenter named Belligerati responded with a similar story, this one involving the well-known libertarian Cato Institute:

I heard Gore’s secret service agents tried to do that to a couple of Cato guys. They were in the front row of a mezzanine and the agents approached them and asked if they would move for Gore. They asked if they were asking or ordering them to leave. When they asked them they said no, and the agents left.

Commenter DG was skeptical:

Obviously false story. Real CATO guys would have asked Gore to buy the seats from them, and then weighed their own internal value for watching the movie against Gore’s market-based bid for their seats. They may also have opened up bidding to adjacent movie-goers.

Another commenter adds:

After displaying, though not brandishing, their concealed weapons.

First, the capacity of even the U.S. government to affect the overall global economy is limited. Suppose the package is $800 billion over two years: $400 billion is less than 1 percent of the global economy and a mere 3 percent of the U.S. economy. In relative terms, $400 billion isn’t all that much more than the $152 billion spent on the 2008 stimulus, which had nary an impact on the economy.

the second major problem: The “off the shelf” infrastructure projects that can be funded immediately and provide immediate demand-side stimulus are almost by definition not the transformative investments we really need.

Spitzer calls for a serious set of “transformative investments” - charging centers at parking lots, hydrogen-capable gas stations, electronic medical records, an unpgraded internet backbone, and (a bit strangely) funding for robotics programs at school. Spitzer is a very smart man, and I really buy the sincerity of his arguments, but I see a few major problems with his way of thinking.

In the case of hydrogen-capable gas stations and the like, Spitzer makes a huge assumption (as the government will if they fund such a venture), that hydrogen cars will be the best alternative in the future. What if they aren’t? That money vanishes down the toilet. Every technophile sees the obvious comparisons: such a venture would be like the someone investing in BetaMax or HD-DVD-specific infrastructure. The market goes another way and the government’s left with a worthless piece of crap. And I don’t buy Spitzer’s statements about robotics programs. If you’re going to make an investment into education, get better teachers, not more funding for exclusive after-school activities.

I guess I can summarize my feelings about the article thus: Spitzer’s correct that the right transformative investments would be better than Obama’s stimulus package. But the wrong transformative investments would be money down the toilet - worse than Obama’s package. And I don’t trust the government to be able to tell the difference between the good and bad transformative investments.

(Headline via Instapundit)

He’s 6′ 6″ and likes to rely on his sinker.  The most I can find on him in the ways of a scouting report is that in ‘06, he could hit 95 mph with movement on his fastball.