The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

The best show on television at the moment is Pardon The Interruption, on ESPN. I love the topics they cover and you really get a good idea of what's going on in the world of sports if you watch it every day. I'm at the point now where I tape it on my DVR every day in case I'm not home at 5:30.

But that's not why it's the best show on TV. I know this show must be enormously entertaining because even my wife watches it with me. My wife doesn't like sports and she can't stand when I watch sports contests on TV, which is often. Today, though, she said, "This is the only show where I find sports entertaining." If PTI can make my wife like sports, then it is the best show on TV.

I sortof took November off from blogging. It was actually a conscious decision versus simply forgetting about it. As is represented by this glut of posts today, I had some ideas, I just didn't write about them. You could argue that none of these ideas are worth writing about, but that's not the point. The point is that I had the ideas and just didn't post them. I started to jot down the topics I wanted to cover over the last couple days and decided to just write all of them today.

I can't say that there's a definitive reason I didn't blog this past month, nor do I imagine anyone is particularly interested. I felt like I had half a cold for the first week or so of November and didn't much feel like doing anything. After that I just didn't go out of my way to put my thoughts down. I feel like now I'm back in the swing.

I'm going to end this with an entirely unrelated thought. I love Waffle House. The only good thing about going to the South is Waffle House. I wish they had them up here. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be popular. The farthest North I've ever seen one is Southern Pennsylvania, right near the border. Here's an interesting phenomenon. Every time I've driven across the Mason-Dixon line I've come upon a Waffle House within the next ten miles. It's like a visitors' station.

So this year I'm really getting involved in doing stuff at school in the extracurricular sense. Last year me and my buddy Wallace coached the JV baseball team at our school. Wallace was the official head coach and I was an assistant. This year Wallace also became the head coach of the JV basketball team and he asked me to help him out again. So this year I'm the assistant coach for both JV basketball and JV baseball. Tons of fun.

We had the tryouts for basketball this past week at school. We expected about 25 people to try out for the 13-15 spots on the team and instead 41 freshman and sophomores showed up to try out for the team. We were a little overwhelmed on that first day. So much so that we had a second day of tryouts the next day where 20 people came back and we ended up keeping 14 of them.

The brand of basketball these kids play is certainly not team oriented and both Wallace and I plan to put a team oriented team on the floor. Wallace has been the assistant varsity coach for three years now, so he has taken the lead in implementing the schemes and I've tried to supplement what he's been doing.

Baseball is sortof the opposite. He was the head coach and took care of all the details as far as getting field permits and scheduling games, but it's fair to say that I was more instrumental in the teaching of fundamentals and strategies for that team last year.

Anyway, coaching is a lot of fun. Basketball is shaping up to be a little more ghetto than baseball, but I think we certainly have talent. I'd love to see a team oriented version of the guys we have when our first game comes up in a month or so.

According to a report from UNAIDS and the World Health Organization that was released earlier this week, the AIDS epidemic is simply spreading. More people today have HIV and AIDS than ever before and the AIDS rate increased in every part of the world except the Caribbean last year. Obviously there are lots of reasons for this and I'm not really going to discuss them. What interests me is that there's a huge argument here for some sort of decapitalization of the pharmaceutical industry.

The companies that make antiretroviral drugs, the main treatment for HIV patients, cannot make the drugs fast enough or cheaply enough for people all over the world to get them. Many people think the epidemic can be more effectively battled if the drugs were more readily available. The reason they are not is because only the companies that developed the drugs are making them. To date, they have not given permission to any other companies to produce the drugs and the other companies, including international ones, are not producing the drugs because they don't want to violate patents.

At some point the best interest of the dying people in the world should be taken into consideration, rather than just the profits and patent protection of the pharmaceutical companies. The issue is a lot more complex than I've represented it, or even than I understand it to be, most likely, but the bottom line is that drug companies across the globe could share the burden of producing these drugs and provide a service to the world at large. There are maybe about 50 different drugs that fall into the category of antiretroviral and they are presumably made by many different companies who all own patents on them. This is a sticky issue, but not without a feasible solution that would maybe curb the dramatic effects of HIV/AIDS.

For example, American drug companies produce antiretroviral drugs for $1500 per whatever unit they are measured in. They are also producing far less than is necessary because they are the only ones doing it. Chinese drug companies say they can produce the same amount of the same drug for 1/10th the price, $150, and can therefore contribute to providing more of the drugs at a lesser costs to governments interested in providing drugs to their citizens or other countries as aid.

Some sort of system where the drug companies can be paid for the rights and maybe given a tax cut or something should be worked out so that the people can have the medicine they need. Also people around the world should be more careful about getting AIDS, but that's an even bigger issue without one simple solution.

This is probably not a huge event in anyone's life, nor is it a huge event in mine, but I found it interesting that I actually bought a pair of Nikes for the first time in a long time. I think the last time I wore Nikes was in my junior year of high school, and I'm fairly certain that I bought those Nikes in my sophomore year, which would mean the last pair of Nikes I bought was in 1993.

I generally don't buy Nikes for several reasons. First is that a lot of the new Nikes are really ugly. I don't know when ugly shoes came into style, but some of the shoes they put out there are really just gross. Second, the ones that are even remotely cool generally cost over $100. So do a lot of the ugly ones that people still seem to buy, incidentally.

Over the years I became partial to a a low top casual sortof sneaker. I especially like th Adidas shell tops and I own 4 pairs of those at last count, purple striped, brown corduroy, hemp khaki colored, and all white. Nike makes a similar sneaker that's just kindof a casual walking shoe that a lot of my students wear. They come in all sorts of colors, but the most popular is white on white. This is a simple shoe and it's ridiculously expensive only because they're popular. They generally cost between $65 and $75 and that's just way too much, in my opinion.

The Adidas I bought were all on sale and I paid like $30, $30, $40, and $50 for them if I remember correctly. When I buy sneakers $50 is generally my absolute upper limit. Usually I buy sneakers that cost $30-$40 and I won't consider any that cost more.

So I came upon these Nikes at Modell's on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. They were on some sort of clearance, and I don't know if they are an old design or what, but they were marked way down to $40 from an original price of I think $80 or maybe more. I don't ever recall seeing a pair of Nikes that I liked that I was also willing to pay for, but this was it. I guess it's not newsworthy, but it was news to me. Here they are. Click on them to see the bigger picture:

I'm writing this before today's Giants game against the Seahawks. I don't know if I like their chances today against the Seahawks, but if the run defense can keep Shaun Alexander honest, then they may have a chance. In the end, this game is a barometer for them, but not really a must win. On the other hand, if they do win today it would go a long way towards restoring legitemacy to the franchise. It would also really help their playoff chances.

Next week's game against the Cowboys is absolutely a must win if the Giants want to win the division and secoure their playoff hopes. Assuming that the Seahawks are a better team and win this week's game, the Giants would be tied with the Cowboys heading into next weeks game and, in essence, a game behind them in the standings since they've already lost to them this year. A loss to the Cowboys would just about end their hopes of winning the division since they'd have to win it outright by a game and would then have to make up two games on Dallas with only two division games remaining. They should have the capacity to win those two games, but so does Dallas.

I like the way the Giants are coming together and look to be much better beyond this season. Eli is clearly going to be an above average quarterback, possibly an elite QB. He's had some growing pains this season, but he's also looked spectacular at times. He's lead three 4th quarter comebacks against the Cowboys, Broncos, and Vikings in impressive fashion. Ironically, they lost two of those three games, but Eli looked really good in those late game situations.

Plaxico Burress is re-energized and is clearly thriving at being the #1 receiver for the G-men. He seems to catch 10 passes every week, which is probably not true, but he's clearly stepped up to his role. Jeremy Shockey is back to his pre-injury form and has wreaked havoc at times against pass coverages. Tiki is solid as always, and Brandon Jacobs has thus far filled his role as a short yardage back, despite the one fumble on the 1-yard line against Dallas, I believe.

The Giants defense went something like 14 quarters without giving up a touchdown within the last month. They held Washington, Minnesota, San Francisco, and Philadelphia in check in impressive fashion. They will continue to stifle offenses as long as their secondary remains healthy, it seems.

This is a poor argument to make for any football team, but it should at least be mentioned that the Giants could easily be 9-1 this season instead of 7-3. The Cowboys game went into overtime and came down to the coin toss. If the Giants had won it, they would have scored just as easily as Dallas did. A friend of mine from Dallas agreed with me on that point. The Vikings game was the worst played football game I've ever seen, especially from a special teams standpoint. If the special teams had just made a tackle, they would ahve won that game. The Giants defense completely and absolutely shut down the Vikings offense that game. All they needed was to stop the kickoff return and punt return TDs.

The Giants remaining schedule is Seahawks, Cowboys, Eagles, Chiefs, Redskins, Raiders. They need to win at least three of those games to make the playoffs, and if they win the Dallas game in particular, then they put themselves in great position. This team is capable of finishing 12-4 in my opinion, but that seems unlikely, especially after that Minnesota loss. I don't know if they quite have the gumption yet to win every game they are supposed to win. That being said, if they make the playoffs, I can see them getting on a run and making some noise.

This is an idea that has probably been hashed much more completely and with much more research than I'm giving it. For example, read the Wikipedia entry on the political spectrum. I'm just interested in what stages the political spectrum actually consist of. Starting on the far left and moving to the far right, here's my view of the American system at least. Fill in the blanks for me and also tell me if you think a category is misplaced.

Communism -> Socialism -> ACLU -> Green Party -> Ted Kennedy -> Average Democrats -> Centrist Democrats -> Ohio <- Libertarians <- Arnold Schwartzenegger <- McCain, Giuliani, Whitman <- Average Republicans <- Dubya <- Christian Right <- Jerry Falwell <- Rich Businessmen <- Laissez Faire <- Anarchists

This is my view of American politics. A singularly linear model is necessarily incomplete, but I've simplified. I wanted to account for the differences between religious Republicans and Big Business Republicans, but it's impossible in this model. In the end, it may just come full circle, since some people insist on Anarchy being a far left position. I don't see how that's possible, however, since Republicans support small government and a lack of central control, and anarchy is the complete absence of control. It would seem that it's just a few steps away from that. In my view, communism and anarchy are complete opposites.

Unrelated, I got in a bit of a funk and didn't feel like blog writing over the last week or so despite some moderately interesting ideas.

It's not necessarily impressive that Kobe Bryant is leading the league in scoring. Everyone more or less expected that. He scored another 37 points last night, incidentally. What is impressive, however, is that through four games this season Kobe has scored 146 points and has not even attempted a three point shot. Kobe is driving the lane, hitting short jumpers, and has a field goal percentage of .514 at the moment. Those are dominant center type numbers and Kobe is putting them up as a shooting guard. That's enormously impressive.

It's safe to say the the Knicks are not gelling. Marbury looks like he doesn't know what he's supposed to do. He's capable of controlling the game with the ball in his hands, but he doesn't want Larry to get mad at him or something because he's trying to spread it around. Eddy Curry can't play 45 seconds without picking up two fouls, and Quentin Richardson and Jamal Crawford just have no conscience between the two of them. They'll shoot any time, any place.

The one impressive part about the Knicks is their group of young guys. It was actually fun to watch the second half of their game the other day against Golden State when Nate Robinson, David Lee, Channing Frye, Trevor Ariza, and Jamal Crawford were on the floor. They played with great energy and really turned the game around until the veterans came back in and blew the lead the kids had amassed. I'm worried that Larry Brown is not going to play the younger gies once the team starts to get its shit together. I'd like to see these guys develop. At the moment David Lee reminds me of a poor man's Kurt Thomas, who himself is a poor man's Karl Malone.

I can't imagine anyone beating the Spurs this year. Even if the Heat get their shit together and get everyone healthy, they don't have the fire power to do it.