Another Cold Bike Ride, Problems Almost Solved

Today's bike ride was a 22 degrees Fahrenheit venture that my Christmas gifts all helped to conquer. Mom and Dad got me the Cannondale Chamois tights and Gloves, Jenn got me 180s earmuffs, and I threw on my polypropylene long undies and balaclava and was just about perfect. Most notable was that my hands weren't being brutalized through my up-till-now adequate fleece gloves as the Cannondale gloves did the job well. The only exception to this was my legs were a TAD bit chilly with the very light wind.

Now, this was an all downhill trip so my legs don't really get a chance to get warm while I'm going to work, but that doesn't change the fact that it's cold out there and with a heavier wind it's going to be brutal. A pair of wind pants would probably do the trick nicely. I know of a couple that I'm looking at online right now, hopefully they won't be too pricey. I had been using my Columbia rain pants but they're not so great in the cold weather, though they rule for rainy weather.

Smith, OSU Shown Lacking in BCS Game - As Expected

I'm sure you've heard the score of the BCS Championship Game, and you've heard that tOSU got an amazing 82 yards in the game.

Eighty-Two.

EIGHTY-TWO. And most of those yards were from Antonio Pittman.

Which means that the guy who won the Heisman finished 4-for-14 for 35 yards and ended up with the lowest passing efficiency rating of any quarterback in BCS history. And mostly got his clock cleaned all night as his vaunted unstoppable offensive line was pummeled by Florida's speed.

Now, the point I'm going to make here is to show you that I WAS RIGHT. And so was anyone who said that Troy Smith wasn't worthy of the Heisman this season due to the power of the rest of his team. They made him look good all season, and he obviously was just a "good" player at best. When faced with that good a defensive line, he folded.

Let's compare: in a 47-21 loss to Michigan, Brady Quinn threw for 234 yards and 3 touchdowns. In a 44-24 loss to USC, he threw for 274 yards and 3 touchdowns. And in the Sugar Bowl against LSU, a 41-14 loss, he threw for 148 yards and 2 touchdowns.

So even in losing efforts (where the majority of the losing was by the defense), Quinn put up good numbers (well, fair numbers in the case of LSU). Smith? Nope.

Once again, the Maxwell Award got it right (as well as, apparently, the Cingular award) and the Heisman got it wrong. Maybe it's time to start ignoring the Heisman as the end-all and be-all of college football individual awards.

The final point I'd like to make is that the Big "We Can't Count" needs a championship game. If you're not going to play everyone in your conference (which OSU COULD do, but that would leave room for only two patsies on their schedule other than their conference "rivals") then you need to have a championship game. As in 2002 when OSU didn't play Iowa and therefore ducked a major conference powerhouse, OSU didn't have to play Wisconsin this year (who WON their bowl game). A championship game would serve two purposes: 1) it would legitimize the "conference champion" and 2) it would give the team one more game closer to the bowl game.

The Big "We Can't Count" would be well advised to stop listening to their juggernauts in OSU and U of M who don't want to lose the "importance" of their big game together at the end of the season and simply instate a championship game.

And one more thing: the Heisman folks need to stop awarding their prize before the season's over.

The Boy Makes Me Proud

Duncan brought this book over to me last night to read to him. I almost cried I was so happy.

Of course, we ended the evening with One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and How Do Dinosaurs Count To Ten. The boy likes his Geisel and extinct reptiles.

Spectre of Willingham Still Looms Large Over Irish

I couldn't do it.

As much as I do and always will support the Fightin' Irish, I couldn't watch another bowl loss this season. I stopped watching after LSU scored their first TD of the second half, and went to bed. Part of this was because I was just really tired after unwisely staying up playing Splinter Cell two nights ago, but the other part of me was the weariness of seeing my team try desperately to overcome the carnage that Tyrone Willingham has wreaked on it for three years.

A friend of mine told me that he thinks Notre Dame screwed Ty Willingham over by letting him go after only three years. I think this is a fallacy for the following reason: Ty Willingham was simply not willing to do what it took to attract top rank talent to Notre Dame across the board.

Now, some of you will say "oh, Brady Quinn isn't top rank talent? Jeff Samardzija isn't?" I'm not going to disagree with you there: those guys are first day draft picks, no doubt. Maybe even Victor Abiamiri and Derek Landri. But that's where it ends. And the real problem isn't in the high-profile roles: it's in the down and dirty grinder players: your two lines (offensive and defensive), linebackers, and particularly our defensive backs. Let's put it this way: look at our linebackers and d-backs: each of them featured a player who had to be converted from another position (Travis Thomas at LB, Chinedum Ndukwe at safety) in order to fill a need. And both decisions also left us light at other positions.

Notre Dame, on its own as a name and as an academically high-ranked school, is going to attract a few smart talented players. That's where Brady Quinn and his ilk show up. But let's face it: recruiting isn't something you can do by just walking up to some recruit's door and saying "hi, I'm from Notre Dame." You have to put some work into it, particularly with all the media bad-mouthing that goes on. And for whatever reason, that wasn't something that Willingham was able to do on a national basis like Notre Dame requires.

LSU dominated us last night because of their two lines and their defensive backs. We couldn't break through their offensive line enough to put pressure on Jamarcus Russell, nor stop them from setting up a good running game. Their defensive backs were able to cover our receivers well enough that Quinn had to take too much time in the pocket. ND never stopped trying, and I have all the respect in the world for the drive of our players. But if the size and speed aren't there, you're never going to be able to get anything done.

People say Charlie Weis is overrated. Well, I look at it this way: he's currently being asked to excel with players who are outclassed at almost every position by the opposition. And for the most part, he's succeeding. The only teams who have beaten us in the past 2 years, with one exception, are GREAT teams. Michigan State (the exception), USC and OSU last year, U of M, USC, and LSU this year. And hell, we almost beat USC last year.

Check out this blog entry at Her Loyal Sons. They say it much better than I can, particularly when I'm so full of vitriol.

Update: More support for this thought (though a little less giving than my own words) from Dan Wetzel at Yahoo! Sports.

I'll Take Potpourri For $1000, Alex

Just a little bit of catch-up to cover the holiday happenings here, before I go off tomorrow on whatever the result of the Sugar Bowl is.

• Christmas was great. I got to spend some quality family time at home with Jenn and Duncan and he really had a good time (though I'm getting a little weary of his Wiggles piano). Duncan also got a pair of padded (of course) hockey sticks and a ball. He's happy as a clam - the kid has picked up on hockey as his favorite sport, for whatever reason, and he runs around the house with one of the sticks, not flailing it around as much as I'd feared, and having a great time trying to hit the ball.
  
  For myself, I got a lot of James Bond stuff from my wonderful family; a pair of bike tights, some gloves, and a pump/repair kit from my folks; a beautiful Irish sweater from Jenn; and some other fun trinkets from various other folks. The tights are going to work out nicely, I think, plus they show off my sexy legs really well. ;)
  
  The one disappointment - our global-warming-addled climate not having enough snow for me to take Duncan sledding on the sled I restored for him for his gift. Hopefully we'll get some of Denver's weather.
  
  
• The best bowl game I've seen so far is the Fiesta Bowl and the upset win by the Boise State Broncos. Despite my disappointment that the Glendale staff didn't paint half the field blue for the visitors from the potato state, the game was the most fun to watch of all of them. Normally I hate the NCAA's overtime structure, but darn it if that wasn't a great one. To watch a team actually go for a two point conversion instead of playing it safe and taking the one-pointer to force a second overtime period was a joy. And I always (with one notable exception, Jenn) enjoy watching Big 12 teams look like a bunch of over-hyped jokers.
  
  And the incurable romantic in my heart appreciated Fox covering the post-game proposal by Broncos star running back Ian Johnson to his cheerleader girlfriend... true Americana there!
  
  
• I started a new twist on my workout routine - instead of saying "I'm gonna work out every day" or something like that, I am going for numbers this year: I set a goal for the year of 100,000 Hindu squats and 30,000 Hindu push ups from the Matt Furey Combat Conditioning workout. And keeping track of those reps all year long will hopefully help me to have something to really strive for. We'll see... check out my other blog if you're curious about how that's working out (no pun intended).
  
  
• The Sugar Bowl has me a bit scared. LSU is gonna be tough, and we've not played up to our potential in a lot of games this season (with the exception of the Penn State game). Hopefully Weis has the boys ready. And hopefully we'll be surprised as we were back in the Cheerios Bowl a decade ago.
  
  
• I watched a great documentary from Discovery Times that I'd Tivoed a couple months ago (finally) called Addicted To Oil. Created by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman, it goes into the damage that oil does to our national security and to our climate, really breaking it down and showing the effects on both our security and the world's weather. He also goes into oil alternatives for both vehicles and general consumption, pointing out the good and bad of the various ideas. Very cool - check it out if you have the chance.
  
  And yes, I still need to see An Inconvenient Truth though I know most of what he's talking about already.
  
  
• On a similar train of thought, I watched Syriana over the holidays. This movie was outstanding though very disturbing at parts. Theatrically, it was a bit confusing, though that's part of its charm - you never are quite sure what's going on any more than the characters themselves are. It's definitely a movie you can see over and over and make new connections all the time.
  
  But the more important thing to take from it is the hypocrisy of the oil industry and its proponents in the government. The part that got me the most is when the eldest son of the emir, Nasir, is talking about how the US wants his brother to be the new emir because they consider him a Communist, simply because he decided to sell the country's oil to China as they offered him the best price (a very capitalist idea, wouldn't you think?).
  
  Go see this one if you haven't already. Though, if you're looking for a typically buff and sexy George Clooney in it, you're going to be watching the wrong movie because he reportedly put on 30 pounds for the role.
  
  
• There are still a couple things I want to get for my biking experience - a set of bike lights for the dark days and for my own safety, and some panniers so I don't have to use a backpack (and hopefully are a little more waterproof than the backpack I'm currently using. A set of fenders would also be nice - so I don't have to keep putting on rain pants.
  

I think that's everything.

Unfortunately, I Get This A Little TOO MUCH

You know you're a dork when you can actually pick out the Star Trek episodes in videos like this:



Thanks to Carrie for pointing this video out.

The Hate-Roll

Some people have a blogroll, I have a hate-roll. Consider it my list of pet peeves, I guess. An ongoing project of mine, it's therapeutic.

Sports:

1. People who refer to MLS as "The MLS." The league's name is Major League Soccer. We don't call baseball "The MLB," do we? Pay attention to what you're saying.
   
   
2. Members of the sports media who can't see through their personal likes and dislikes well enough to deliver an unbiased report. I'm talking to you guys, Mark May and Frank Deford.
   

Language:

1. The omitting of the words "to be" from sentences. Example: "My broken watch needs fixed."
   
   
2. Mis-spellings on publicly-viewable items. Example: A high school message board that says "Congradulations Football Team!" or something like that.
   

Frappr Map

If you'd like to join my Frappr Map and tell me where you're from, I'd love to have you join!

Ohio Lawmakers Still Can't Get It Right

I'm not sure if I've gone off about the lack of good physical education in today's schools as much as I have other topics, but I'm going to do it now. First, the article (since it may disappear from the Dispatch after a week):

Ohio Core bill lets athletes skip gym

Senator hates idea, hopes to change provision next year

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Dan Weist

OHIO NEWS NETWORK

Gov. Bob Taft has yet to sign the Ohio Core high-school curriculum overhaul, but the legislation’s primary sponsor already is planning to seek the reversal of one provision.

Sen. Randall Gardner, a Republican from Bowling Green, said the provision, added late in the lame-duck session, would dramatically weaken physical education in Ohio’s high schools by changing gym-class requirements.

Gardner said the amendment offered by Rep. John Schlichter, allows school districts to excuse from gym class any students involved in sports, cheerleading or the marching band.

Gardner said that although the provision didn’t get much attention during last week’s floor debates, it prompted an intraparty dispute that slowed passage of the Ohio Core legislative package.

The curriculum plan, which Taft proposed in January in his final State of the State address, has been touted as a way to prepare young Ohioans for success in college. The legislation mandates tougher high school course work, including an additional year of math instruction and at least three lab-based science classes.

Students may opt out of the plan under certain conditions, at least initially, but doing so will make them ineligible to attend most of Ohio’s four-year public universities without first taking additional college-level courses.

"I didn’t want to hold up the bill for just this," Gardner said of the physical-education amendment. "But I do plan to try and change it in the next session."

Schlichter, of Washington Court House, defends the idea of letting student-athletes bypass traditional gym classes.

"To me, it’s just the right thing to do, to be able to allow kids to expand their course work when they have already done physical activity," said Schlichter.

Now, high-school students in Ohio must earn a half-credit in physical education to graduate.

Because of Schlichter’s amendment, the Ohio Core legislation on Taft’s desk gives school districts the option of maintaining that requirement or allowing students to receive the half-credit through participation, for a minimum of two seasons, in a designated extracurricular activity.

The change is likely to appeal to student-athletes, who will be able to graduate without taking a gym class.

"I think that since band is a period and a half long, we should have that count as a credit for gym," said Katie Lewis, a member of the color guard at Pickerington Central High School.

One of the school’s band teachers, Dan Joy, also likes the idea. Not having to take a gym class might enable students to concentrate on other subjects and perhaps take more math and science courses, he said.

"I think that is an excellent option for students," he said.

Not everyone at Pickerington Central, however, supports the change. Principal Chuck Kemper, a former coach and physical-education teacher, said he worries about the long-term ramifications for today’s young people.

"If we allow children to be excluded from physical education and these activities, later in life what are they going to do to be active? " Kemper asked.

I have to agree with Kemper. Gym class should be a daily class with an emphasis on lifetime sports and personal fitness. I'm partially in favor of exempting student-athletes from it, and heck, I'll even throw in the cheerleaders for programs that do lots of tumbling/pyramid/dance stuff. That sort of exercise is great for all-over fitness and flexibility, and despite the cheesiness of their performances and their instistence that cheerleading is a sport, it's hard work and they are definitely have the tools for keeping in shape.

On the other hand, many of these student-athletes could use instruction on health and fitness outside of their sport. Hence my reluctance to completely agree with this move.

However, the concept of exempting band members is the wrong path. At the risk of sounding elitist and steretyping band members, I think band members who are not athletes should not be exempt because they need the health and fitness instruction as much as anyone else in the school who is not an athlete.

It used to be that fitness and health were considered just as important in education as knowledge. Schools in the renaissance and even earlier are well-documented as finding such activities as fencing, wrestling, etc. just as important for developing a complete individual as their academic studies.

And with today's culture of video games, television and touchy-feely school administrators who don't wish to hurt anyone's feelings in school, kids aren't learning the benefits of being in shape and how to get that way. Obviously, I could go into how the pharmaceutical market loves this situation as they can market more drugs to people who don't know how to be healthy, but that's a topic for another time. Suffice to say that our legislators have an opportunity here to make a statement about the state of health in this State, but instead they're exempting kids from Phys Ed so they can make time for other pursuits. And my response: if these kids aren't healthy when they get out of school, what good are they going to be to anyone?

Casino Royale From A Bond Fan's Point Of View

Over the weekend, I was able to see a movie that I've wanted to see for some time: the newest entry in the James Bond series of films, Casino Royale.

It absolutely ruled.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Daniel Craig has indeed deserved all the apologies I've seen from long-time Bond fans, critics, and pretty much everyone else, as his Bond is the closest to the gritty, egotistical, cold-eyed agent about whom Ian Fleming originally wrote. As I said to my wife when trying to describe the movie to her: it's like all the other Bond movies - lots of great stunts, action, intrigue, etc., and then you add in ACTING.

This is not to say that the other Bonds were bad actors (well, almost all of them), but I often got the feeling that they were simply foils to advance the plot of the movie and show off lots of stunts, etc. Craig, on the other hand, is an actor's actor. He's dissected the role of 007 and made it his own by making it Fleming's. The cheesy lines, when they were included (and that wasn't often), were delivered in a way that you know the character enjoyed saying it, instead of just saying them because it fit the pattern of a Bond movie. The ego was readily apparent, as was the loss of the ego when he found himself

The supporting cast was also excellent. I'll start with Judi Dench as M. It would be very easy for Dench to have simply gone into autopilot and put out a performance that was similar to the other movies - referring to Bond as a misogynisitc dinosaur, criticizing the playboy appeal, etc. But the good Dame did not do that at all. This was a different Bond, and she played to that new Bond extraordinarily well. She had whole new sets of problems with him, new sorts of respect for him, and a different relationship with him. He wasn't the golden boy of MI6, he was the newly promoted guy who was basically under probation. And he was sort of a pain in the ass to deal with. Dench pulled this off magnificently.

Eva Green was the perfect femme fatale for this new Bond. She was a strong personality, and it was clear that she didn't like Bond nor the mission because she didn't really understand either it or him. And she was clearly horrified by what he did for a living after the fight in the stairwell, but was also clearly attracted to him by his ability to realize that not everyone could deal with his work and lifestyle (as evidenced by the rather tender shower scene).

Mads Mikkelsen was perhaps the most believable Bond villain we've ever had (though Sean Bean's Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye is a close second if not equal). For almost the first time, the villain wasn't just some rich guy with a weird tic of some kind. We actually understood where he was coming from, as the terrorist's banker who lost his clients' money with an "investment" gone wrong. And he was under serious pressure to get the money back before his clients found out about the situation. If he hadn't been such a schmuck, you could almost feel bad for him.

The action scenes made sense, instead of being done just to be visually stimulating. The fight scenes showed the real desperation of men locked in combat instead of being a cheesy way to show Bond's superiority over a bunch of guys foolish enough to try to attack him. And the editing was great too - they truly showed the awful-ness of two men fighting to the death - no silling karate chops a la Roger Moore or the famous two handed Captain Kirk punches. Daniel Craig has obviously been working hard on his fighting skills to make this look so realistic, and it paid off.

And another thing about the action scenes that was pointed out to me on my newest favorite podcast, Being James Bond: they weren't just a music video. The music, if any, was very incidental and let the action happen. In the past it's seemed like McG was the director for all the action sequences, and this one was the most realistic-seeming that I could imagine.

Now, as a Bond fan, I've read all the Bond work that Fleming has put out. Casino Royale was the first Bond novel written and therefore the first one I ever read (as I like to read all my works by an author in order). And it was the perfect book to start over with for that reason. But I wasn't prepared for just how much the movie was going to adhere to the plot. You can't say it was dead on, because it wasn't. The original was based during the Cold War and therefore was very much a NATO vs. USSR conflict, with Le Chiffre being the SMERSH banker. In this, he's more or less a private contractor who bankrolls terror organizations. But that's where the differences end, for all intents and purposes.

As anyone who's ever gone with me to a movie adapted from a book I like knows, I'm a stickler for being faithful. Now that's not to say that the stories have to follow the work exactly and to the letter, but they have to capture the spirit of the book and follow the same basic plot. The Batman movies frustrated me to no end, until the release of Batman Begins. That was an absolute masterpiece. And this was the same: I walked out thinking "Oh my stars and garters - they finally got it right." I was completely satisfied with the movie with one exception - it wasn't long enough and it's too long to wait for the next one. I got home that night and was disappointed that Amazon.com didn't have a link to pre-order the DVD yet.

I can sort of understand why Bond movie fans might have been disappointed with parts of this movie. Craig does not play the same cheesy super-agent guy that Moore and Brosnan played. In fact, his portrayal of Bond is closest to that of Timothy Dalton, in regards to the seriousness with which the actors play the role. And they didn't make use of Q, the gadgets, boat chases, spaceships, Jaws, and ladies who couldn't help but undress Bond with their eyes every time they saw him. And in all honesty, I sat there expecting it and was surprised by those scenes not being there. An example of this was when Bond first walks into the Ocean Club and talks to the lady at the desk. That was exactly the spot in a Moore movie when the undersexed hotel worker would check him out from top to bottom and suggestively respond to his request, followed by a smirk and polite rejoinder by Moore. We didn't get that in Casino Royale.

As I just mentioned, Craig's Bond is most like Timothy Dalton's Bond, IMHO. But the Dalton movies suffered from not trying to be realistic enough with the rest of the movie. Casino Royale never has that problem. They have re-started this series on the right foot, in my opinion, and I can't wait for more.

Conflict of Interest? ESPN Doesn't Care

In its latest mess-up among many, ESPN has decided that just reporting slanted sports news and broadcasting events isn't enough for them. Now they've actually become a part owner of the Arena Football League. Get ready to see all sorts of this crap sport on ESPN now, taking away from good sports like soccer.

As usual, ESPN's ethics are in the toilet. Unbiased journalism be damned.

They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

I was at Subway today, wearing a windbreaker that I got from one of the charities I support. It was the first time wearing it. I went to pull it off, and just about pulled the hood right off the thing.

That hole you see in the hood in the picture? Well, that's not supposed to be there.

Perhaps It's Time For Jamie To Shut Up At Crew Games

Auto-Centrism

This morning I had to take a different route to work because I was dropping off a rental car at the Budget place. So I put the bike and my work stuff in the back, dropped it off, and rode to work. And I discovered something that I already knew, but illustrated in a way that I hadn't considered before.

My bike is not heavy enough to set off those pressure plates under the road that control the traffic lights. I sat through two iterations of the light at the corner of Lane and Fyffe/Fred Taylor on tOSU's campus before this occurred to me. I was trying to turn left and no one else was, so I finally had to wait for an open spot and fly through. My attempts to be a considerate cyclist and follow the rules of the road were waylayed by the auto-centric roads.

Most of the time that hasn't been an issue, as there have been plenty of cars to trigger the lights via their gas-guzzling weight, but not today. And that strikes me as pathetic and anti-pedestrian/cycling.

Bicycle Lunch Issues

Today I biked about a mile and a half away for lunch (to Chipotle. Those of you who know me personally know that this is not odd in any way). I really liked getting out of the office and getting some exercise over lunch, and getting over to Kingsdale Shopping Center wasn't really that big of a deal.

My only issue was with the guy who decided he needed to honk at me because he got stuck behind me when there was traffic in the lane next to ours.

I just take it as jealousy:

1. Because I was on a bike and he was in a car.
   
2. Because I didn't care that I was holding up traffic and he did.
   
3. Because I wasn't contributing to global warming and he was.
   

The impatience of people absolutely amazes me. I probably held him up for a whole ten seconds while I tried to shift lanes (naturally, the people in the lane next to us weren't exactly helpful).

But all this comes back to a problem in the city of Columbus of which Paul Dorn reminded me in his blog about San Francisco's traffic in the days before the 1906 earthquake: automobiles don't see their presence on the road as a privilege, but rather as a right. And that simply isn't the case. It's a privilege that you get because you fulfilled all the steps for getting a driver's license and you've not broken the traffic laws to the extent that you've had it taken away. Being a pedestrian or a cyclist is a right. There's no license necessary for a cyclist or a pedestrian.

Motorists need to get that through their heads.