If you enjoyed Pattern Recognition, now's a great time to finish up the arc with
Spook Country and Zero history.  They aren't sequels in the strict sense but threads
of the first two culminate in the third.  I always find Gibson both insightful and
entertaining. 

I love his earlier cyberpunk novels.  I rarely revisit books, but I've read them all
multiple times.  I highly recommend them all in approximate order that he wrote
them.  Not only due to some character interleaving, but because I think he
managed to develop a real universe (or setting or microcosm if you'd rather since
it's mostly southern california based and never beyond low earth orbit) and
following along as he creates from book to book adds another meta level to the
experience.  Don't let my pitchfork level, probably misguided, over analysis push
you away from the fact that his books are very entertaining with multidimensional
characters and a ton of action.

His latest three have somehow managed to move backwards in time from cyberpunk
to the 'near future' setting wise but at the same time are so much more modern.  I
think cyberpunk, as much as I love it, spoke to the concern that ubiquitous access to
data would lead more to increased oppression as power structures harnessed and
exploited the data to perpetuate themselves.  Instead it has mostly lead to more boring
classic commercial exploitation and assholes like us uniting in a common interest (in this
case the Cubs) and instead spending all our time have the same generic conversations
that still happen in bars, dorm rooms, parents' basements, and such.  It's a lot more
interesting to explore the concept of the disenfranchised regaining meaning, importance,
and control versus some stupid bullshit about twitter or facebook or something.  I'm sure
Douglas Coupland or someone is giving it a shot and I'm sure I don't give a shit.  Gibson
has moved on to far more relevant ideas about things like the interdependency and feedback
loops in our society and who, if anyone, really controls things at this point.  He doesn't
present answers, he doesn't even directly bring up the questions.  He writes entertaining
fiction, but the concepts are in there somewhere.

Gibson and Iain M Banks (but never Iain Banks) are my two favorite living novelists, I
recommend them to pretty much everyone and it was awesome that they both recently
released novels.

Anyone have any recent cyberpunk or (a guilty pleasure of mine) space opera type
recommendations?  I'd even settle for some decent options.  So much of it is garbage
sadly, but I love anytime there is something decent to read in either genre.

1908 seems like way too many for this team.

Before you all get your panties in a bunch, let's see how all the recent World Series champions have done...

Yankees

Cardinals

White Sox

Red Sox

Phillies

Had Prior stayed healthy, the Cubs would have done as well in the 1st as any other team than the Phillies.

I mean, it's not a _good_ list, but it's pretty much par for the MLB.  I think the Cubs refusal to spend serious
money on scouting and development was a far bigger issue and something to hate the Tribune for.  The
Tribune ran the organization for total shit until the last couple years as they tried to throw on a new coat of
paint to sell.

I don't like the idea of instant replay in baseball, but fuck if the umps aren't making
me change my minds.

Solid first half inning, anyways.

In the last 15 years, ESPN has never failed when given the opportunity to make something worse.

I don't think he's been _THAT_ bad as a player himself, but I don't think
he's played an effective CB as far as stopping opposing teams because in
some part (I'd argue large, others can argue small if they'd like) the scheme
he has played in is not good at stopping the pass.  The amount of time that
opposing QBs have to throw the ball is such a huge factor on pass coverage
success for any defensive player, I think any attempt to compare defensive
backs' effectiveness at any kind of fine grain is mostly worthless until you can
factor that in at some level.

Ranking Pace 73 of 77 sounds about right.

I'm not so sure that, as much as I love Tillman, that he has had good years the last two. 
In 2007 it ranks him at #3 overall.  Football evaluation and advanced stat stuff is a
mystery to me because there's so much team interaction that I don't know how you
can reliably assign things like which defender has what coverage, particularly in the
case where things break down.  I mean, it's easy to identify good plays, but when a
receiver ends up wide open it's frequently a guessing game of who blew the coverage.

There's plenty of other options if you want to go that route, employees not following company policy,
Alexi not establishing a policy, Alexi or his boss not allowing policies to be put in place because they
cost money.  There's a boatload of specific reasons why that bank sucked.  I'm sure Alexi shared some
level of responsibility, but none of us or the media investigators seem to know if it's .0001% or 50% of
the blame.  Hell, I have no idea.  I don't even like the guy.  But to claim that he somehow got a media
free pass on this stuff when it's been all over the news for at least a month is crazy talk.

Maybe, depends how the law suits work out.

There have been a ton of articles about allegations and details of who loans were given to.  Are you
only talking about the front page aspect?  Because it seems like that article has pretty much no new
details as far as I can tell and still fails to actually tie the bad loans to the candidate.  I mean, compared
to all the actual insider trading and other shady business deals that politicians get close to free passes on
(I'll mention both G W Bush and Clinton for fairness), working at a bank which gave out some bad loans
isn't exactly a big deal.  There's been not a shred of evidence that he was actually bribed or even
personally interacted with the dudes:



So the bank loaned someone money to purchase an office building, and they bought the office building,
but the bank was supposed to know that it was a hand shake deal instead of investment?  How the hell
would the bank know that?  Everything I've read shows that they didn't have police records when the
loans were approved.  I think there's plenty of room to take the bank to task for loaning so much money
without any significant oversight, but I don't see how you can claim that this is under reported.

I assume the comparisons were along the lines of: "Hot Tub Time Machine was not as good
as the The Hangover or Knocked Up."  Ebert seems to think HTTM is a decent comedy, so
I'm sure it is.

I've played a bit older (2008 I think, I heard 2009 was worse) version, but I got most of my points from fielding.
One thing that really fucked me was that the penalties for failing a challenge was really high, like a -10 when a
hit might be +2 or something.  Frequently the challenges were pretty much impossible, like driving in a runner
from 1st with my slap dick hitting 18 year old SS, or I was supposed to get a hit and I get 4 straight balls no
where near the plate and walk instead and so I'd get the few positive points I had wiped out.  The penalties
just seemed crazy because even if I was a great hitter, I'd have under a 50% chance of completing them.  That
and the psp loading eventually drove me away from it.

Shouldn't you be hitting the shit out of the ball then?

I'm kidding.  In seriousness, based only on the psp version, I think that the whole
super slow progression of RTTS is one of its charm, but in practice it's just too
slow to keep my attention.  With the psp version there is just so much loading and
stuff in between the action, how much filler is there between ABs/fielding events
on the ps3?

I really wonder what the local sports writers/tv douches make, because I really don't
think it's very much.  I envision the jobs as inconvenient hours with mediocre pay and
full of dealing with awful people and even more awful network suits.  There's a lot of
jobs that sound idyllic, but in actuality I would never trade my current soulless job for
(I'm not BCing here, my current job is a good situation, but it's not watching and
discussing sports.)

I just finished reading (well, listening to anyways) a book about the Brooklyn Dodgers
for no apparent reason because I don't like the Dodgers and I hate New Yorkers
talking about themselves in their too-ignorant-to-be-solipsistic inanity, but I picked it
up over the winter when I'm weak for anything baseball related.  Anyways, the real
interesting thing to me was all these fans being interviewed just complained about
how once blacks started going to the games the fans couldn't appreciate the
Dodger's Symphony they had playing between innings or how much they loved
Hank Greenberg because he was Jewish.  And that's when I realized that the game
has always had the same idiot fans and that there never was a golden era of baseball,
unless it was in the 1800s and then who gives a fuck because no one knows anything
about it.

And, well, I'll say I because I'd hate to start presuming for everyone with a we, but I
think I've fallen too far into the counter culture rage against the idiots all I am is a rat
in a cubicle thing and I'm letting my hatred of people who don't actually enjoy
_baseball_ ruin my ability to enjoy it myself.  

Fuck that all, this year I'm enjoying baseball.  I'm leaving regressing to the mean, and
the fact that it's almost always a bad idea to bunt or steal, and the idea that the idea
of clutch hitting is a myth at home and I'm going to cheer on my favorites and clap for
Silva if he manages to get through an inning without shitting himself and enjoy the games
they win and enjoy exciting plays, and maybe even make an occasional excuse when
they lose.  I'm going to believe in hot streaks (but never players being due for a hit,
because that one is just dumb) and when it's close and late I hope to fuck that Ramirez
is at the plate.  I'm going to go ahead and believe they can win the Central.

I'm still not singing the guest conducted 7th inning stretch.