Brief Baseball Rant

Ouch. Painful loss for my Giants today. Perhaps best summed up in this rant from Grant at McCovey Chronicles:

I'm through figuring out how to make the lineup better. It's like trying to build a combustion engine out of shredded cheese. Just stop.

I would laugh, if I weren't busy crying inside.

At least tomorrow is an off day. Maybe that will hurt less. I can hope.

Theater Overdose

This weekend we kind of tested whether it is possible to get too much theater. The venue was the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and this was our second long weekend trip there this summer. Back in June we took the whole family, and we each saw three or four plays over three days. That was pretty nice. This time was a bit more intense. With our daughter away at summer camp, my wife and my mother-in-law and I managed to see six plays in three days.

The good news is: no problem! We really enjoyed all six plays. The bad news is...um...I guess we got pretty tired. Really, it was quite stunning how good it was. Six good plays.

We drove up Thursday night after work, and aside from some road work that slowed us down, it was a smooth, easy drive. Arriving about 1:00 am, we decided to sleep late Friday morning, which was fine, as we didn't have anywhere to be until our first play at 1:30 pm.

Quick breakfast at Brothers (with enough leftovers for at least one more breakfast), including very delicious scones, then off to the theater.

The first play on the docket was "The African Company Presents Richard III," a quite fascinating historical piece about an African-American theater company in New York City in the 1820s, presenting high-quality productions on a shoestring budget and its interactions with some rival, mainstream theaters. Very solid production, thought-provoking and interesting. The character "Papa Shakespeare" was particularly good, especially his scene being a "griot" translator.

After a tasty dinner at Tabu, we returned to see "Love's Labor's Lost" in the outdoor Elizabethan theater. That was a fun, solid production of one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. One one hand, you can see it's not as polished a script as some of the later works. On the other hand, the word play is rampant, which makes it particularly fun.

One thing I'm starting to appreciate about OSF is that they are a true repertory company. Not only do they use many of the same actors season after season and for different plays over the course of the season, the schedule is such that an actor may play roles in multiple plays in the same day. There were several who appeared in both of our Friday plays, including Charles Robinson, who had played "Papa Shakespeare" in the afternoon, and then appeared as Sir Nathaniel, the Curate in LLL. With much less makeup in the latter play, I finally recognized him from his role on the TV show "Night Court." Funny guy, and a fine stage actor, which is not always the case for TV actors.

Saturday we slept in again, then went back to the theater to see "Julius Caesar" in the New Theater, the smallest and most intimate of the OSF venues. This was an extremely cool production, performed in the round (or square, really), with the players rarely leaving the stage, taking seats in or near the audience. It was a very powerful experience, especially since we were in the front row (I think there are only 7-8 rows, anyway). With the actors dressed in contemporary costumes and talking with us before the show started (among other things, Cassius warned us that we were potentially in the "splash zone," but that the fake blood has detergent in it, so it should wash right out), it drew us right in, and with the scenes playing out literally in our faces, and characters sitting right next to us. I admit it's a bit unnerving to have Ceasar's ghost sitting right at my elbow. She (yes, she) was intense.

I would say that performance was the highlight (among many great experiences) of the weekend.

Jan went for a massage after the play, and we met up later at the Caldera Tap Room (outstanding beers, rather slow service) for beer, burgers, and sweet potato fries. Then back to the theater for "Measure for Measure." Really good production, cool staging, set in the 1970s. Lucio is portrayed as a jive pimp. And it works.

Sunday arrives, and we're back to the New Theater for "Ghost Light," a new play that we're also going to see next season at Berkeley Repertory Theater. It was, in a word, fabulous. It was particularly poignant to those of us who lived through the triggering event and aftermath, and probably more so to those of us who lost our fathers at a young age, too. This is a great, great play, and I look forward to seeing it again.

And finally, we concluded with "August: Osage County." It's really a tour de force and a marathon. It's disturbing and kind of vicious, and at times hilarious. It takes 3.5 hours and two intermissions, but it was really good.

So, a few of conclusions at the end of the weekend:

• OSF has amazing actors, and this season, some incredible plays. We love going to the theater, but we're usually resigned to the notion that some fragment of the shows we go to will just not click for us. I saw ten shows in Ashland this year, and all were good, and some amazingly so.
• Normally at the theater, especially when I'm tired, I find myself glancing at my watch to see how long until the end of the act, play, etc. Not once this weekend, through six plays, did I even think of doing that. In fact, I was generally surprised when intermission arrived, having been so immersed in the play that time had flown by. Similarly, by the end, although I could tell that the plot had been resolved and such, it seemed impossible that I had actually sat through 3+ hours already. That, to me, is a sign of great theater.
• Finally, I am forever amazed at the skill and versatility of the actors at OSF. At one point, we realized we'd see the same actor in three consecutive plays, with fairly major roles in two of them. Just amazing.

As you can tell, we had a great weekend. I have to conclude at this point that with high enough quality plays, I can pretty much sit through as much as the theater will provide. And that summarizes our second weekend at OSF this year. Great stuff. I'd go back in a heartbeat, but will have to wait until next year.

New Respect for Old Politics

I was really impressed by a post by Digby yesterday. In addition to her usual wonderful writing, she quoted a terrific (and amazingly timely) speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1936. And like her, I am impressed with FDR's rhetoric:

It's a great speech, filled with all the rhetoric a lot of us would love to hear today.I particularly enjoyed the explanatory pieces, which speak to the people like adults and doesn't use improper metaphors.

 It's well worth clicking through to the text of the FDR speech, posted on Michael Moore's site. It's almost incomprehensible that a politician would make such a detailed, comprehensive speech nowadays.

Digby also had a great piece up the previous day, demonstrating how dramatically President Obama's rhetoric today has changed from that of Candidate Obama, circa 2008:

What's wrong with his commentary is his telling those young people that they should see his argument as a template for their own role as engaged citizens. I can't think of anything more antithetical to his message in 2008 than "don't set up a situation where you're guaranteed to be disappointed." It's actually rather stunning.

And it's completely wrong in terms of the role of average citizens (and especially young activists) in the political process. They are supposed to push for what they believe in with passion and single minded commitment. They shouldn't worry about "what can pass" congress or the limits of the political process. That's the job of politicians and political hacks. 

 As a former political hack, I certainly understand the need to formulate a policy that can actually be adopted and accomplish something, and I understand that incrementalism is sometimes a necessary approach to long-term problem solving.

But now as an outsider, an average citizen, I also understand the importance of differing and even extreme positions. After all, if only one side in a debate takes an extreme position, that moves the "center," or the range of possible compromises, in that side's directions.

It's been really interesting (in an abstract sense) to watch what used to be extremist, far-out positions espoused by the likes of Newt Gingrich in the 1980s become a consensus position within his party, while simultaneously decrying anything other than the mainstream, corporatist pablum as extremist, socialist, communist, and so on. By deligitimizing positions that were until recently quite commonplace, they continue to move the center of the debate farther to the right.

As a former congressional staffer and Washingtonian, I read with interest an article by Congress scholar Norman Ornstein today called "Worst. Congress. Ever.":

When I came to Washington in 1969, for example, the city was riven with division and antagonism over the Vietnam War, which segued into the impeachment of a president, followed by many other difficult and contentious moments. In this case, though, Carvey's old man would be right: The hard reality is that for all their rancor, those times were more functional, or at least considerably less dysfunctional, than what we face with Congress today. 

Ornstein contends that both major political parties have become more homogeneous and that their ideologies no longer overlap: they are more partisan. Although I agree to an extent, and certainly concur that on the whole, the Republicans today sit far to the right of the party of 40 years ago, I find it arguable at best to say that the Democrats as a whole, even minus the "Boll Weevils" and "Blue Dogs" who have largely crossed the aisle and fit solidly into the mainstream of the new Republican party, have become more liberal. Indeed, despite the defection of the more conservative members, the stances represented by the current crop of Democrats largely fall to the right of the mainstream of the mid-late 20th century.

Although I agree that the environment is more partisan, it is also quite clear that the center of the debate has moved considerably to the right. It's harder to get anything done, but what gets done is very, very different than it used to be.

Maybe if we had politicians willing to talk sense to us, that would be different.

Politics as Cargo Cult

I think this (unfortunately) catches a lot of the dynamics of the moment:

President Obama, responsibly acceding to the reality of divided government, is now the leading champion of fiscal austerity, and his proposals contain very little in the way of job creation. More important, he no longer uses his office’s most powerful tool, rhetorical suasion, to keep the country focussed on the continued need for government activism. His opponents’ approach to job creation is that of a cargo cult—just keep repeating “tax cuts”—even though the economic evidence of the past three decades refutes such magical thinking. What does either side have to offer the tens of millions of Americans who have settled into a semi-permanent state of economic depression? Virtually nothing.

 I wasn't in Washington or politics very long, but at least we had some notion that we were doing something. The current clashes of ideologies just seem like so much pointless theater. Sound and fury, etc.

Stories That Must Be Told

You just never know what will prompt me to blog. I've been meaning to, really, and even had posts composed in my head, but no.

Then my friend (known to some of you as "DenDen") pointed me to this story.

me: The 5-foot tall one was $300, marked down to $100. That’s like, $200 worth of chicken for free.

Laura: You’d be crazy not to buy that. I mean, look at it. IT’S FULL OF WHIMSY.

I'm still chuckling. Some of the comments are wonderful, too.

Arguably the Happiest Day of the Year

Yes, it's that most magical of days: Opening Day. Baseball begins again in earnest. The games count. The weather (here) is awesome, all is right with the world.

One of my colleagues pointed me to a good blog post from NPR about the feuding "schools" of baseball fans:

In short, there is, at this point in history, an entirely unnecessary conflict between people who supposedly appreciate the art/ballet/magic/wizardry/magic-8-ball qualities of baseball and people who supposedly only like the boring/nerdy/soulless/drained-of-life qualities of baseball.

 I think that sums it up nicely, and unsurprisingly, I find myself with at least one foot planted firmly in each camp. There is (and ought to be) more than one way to appreciate and enjoy anything, including baseball. I love being able to crunch numbers (or ponder the numbers others have crunched) to try to understand the game a bit more. But I also love to sit out on a sunny day with an adult beverage, an unhealthy meal, and a child's wonder to watch players do things I could only ever dream of.

I'm sure the same is true of opera (maybe without hot dogs and nachos, but still) and many other endeavors. There is technical appreciation and aesthetic joy, and sometimes a blend of the two. I doubt there are enough fans of either sort (for either baseball or opera) to sustain the enterprise. These exhibitions have to appeal to a broad base of patrons to exist. And that's a good thing.

The NPR piece refers to the (sadly, defunct) blog Fire Joe Morgan, which I used to read all the time (and I still link to it over on the right!). I read it because it was interesting. I read it because it was funny. And I read it because it helped me to develop my own understanding and appreciation of baseball. I laughed. I kept reading. Much like I keep going to baseball games and talking with all sorts of different fans. It's fun. I like it.

I realize I haven't gotten around to writing about my trip to Spring Training this year. It was great. I will have to do that. Not only did I get to see my favorite team several times, I also got to see ballgames just for the fun of it, games I had no real rooting interest in. And it was joyous.

So today, we get to say it for real: "Play ball!"

Oh, and we get to say, for at least the next six months or so, "Ladies and gentlemen, the 2010 World Series Champions, your San Francisco Giants!" Can't get enough of that.

Yet Another New Firefox

I upgraded my browser yesterday to Firefox 4, and I have to say that in general I'm quite pleased with it. New features, fast, etc.

As with the Firefox 3.5 upgrade a couple of years ago, Mozilla has a cool page to monitor the downloads worldwide, and once again, it is powered under the covers by my company, SQLstream.

In case you feel like learning how we do our part of the magic, one of my coworkers has written a very good explanation of how it works. Yay!

Words Fail Me

Six months. Really.

It has come to my attention, via some of my throng of loyal followers, that I haven't posted anything for six months. Is it possible that I have seen nothing interesting that I wanted to share? That I've done nothing and been nowhere and simply have nothing to say?

As I look back at the limited posting I did last year, it's clear to me that I was not in a good place, posting-wise. Truly, 2010 was a pretty awful year for me. Indeed, had it not been for my San Francisco Giants winning the World Series (I managed to not blog about that...amazing!), I would happily wipe the whole year from my memory.

I meant to write about things, really. But I didn't.

So what happened? Lots. Most of which you don't want to hear about, and I don't care to write about (school turmoil, home remodeling, busy at work, child-care fun). You know...life. No big deal. But what really sucked the words out of me was this: my mom died. Indeed, I was managing to maintain my meager blogging efforts for the year right up to the point that Mom died. And then, nothing. My last blog post was on August 6th. Mom passed away on August 22nd, and then...nothing.

Sure, there was a lot going on: planning and executing memorial services, clearing the apartment, tidying up financial matters. That takes some time. But surely I could eke out a few moments to write something. Couldn't I?

Apparently not.

So when someone pointed out that it's been six months, and I really should write something, I spent some time pondering just why I have not been writing. I've decided to pin it on my mother. I don't blame her, but she's responsible.

You see, whatever I am as a writer I can pretty much attribute to my mother. She was a teacher, primarily of English, and particularly of writing. She instilled and nurtured in me a love of stories, of books, of libraries, of language. For a time I even worked as a writer and editor, pretty much entirely because she gave me the idea.

So I suppose it's ironic that she probably never read my blog, and probably wasn't even aware that I was writing one. I'm not even clear that she knew what a blog is. But no matter. What's sneaked into my consciousness is that at some level, I associate writing with my mother, much as I associate my day job (programming) with my dad. My parents represent very well the yin and yang of my existence, and I think losing Mom caused me to lose touch with that aspect of myself for a bit. At some level, even though she wasn't reading my writing, it appears I was writing for her, and without her there, I just didn't write.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is something else I'm missing. I suppose I'll figure that out. In any case, it's kind of nice to be writing again.

Thanks for the push. I hope I find something worthwhile to write about. I know I will have some words about Mom and Parkinson's Disease (oh, boy...you thought I went on about cancer!). But that's later. Right now, it's just worth it to break the ice, let you know I still exist, and get one post under my belt. More will follow.

We are All So Doomed

I guess I need to stop looking at the web. It's depressing enough to read stuff like Glenn Greenwald's description of what collapsing empires look like (here's a hint...look in the mirror). Cutting basic services in the name of austerity while spending profligately on foreign wars of choice, for example. Coddling the wealthy while making life harder for the common people.

But then I notice a link on the side of that piece that takes me to a very brief one:

What we see is at once hilarious, sad and perhaps deeply worrying. Do I need to explain? This is the state of airport security in the United States of America, and we, as American citizens, have allowed this to happen. Not only have we become willingly subjugated cowards, we've clearly lost our minds.

 *sigh*

Bloggers from History

I keep wanting to post stuff, but time gets in the way. Well, work and time.

Anyway, now and then I get inspired. I liked this line from PZ Myers:

Mark Twain would have been an awesome blogger.

He's right. Twain would have been great. Oscar Wilde, too. Will Rogers. Smart, opinionated, well-informed, and witty. Sounds like a great recipe for a blogger.

Who else?

Melancholy

I miss my dad today.

I mean, I miss him every day, but today should have been his 85th birthday. Unfortunately, he only got to celebrate 56 birthdays. So it's kind of hard to imagine what he would have been like at 85.

So I guess it's time for one more reminder: Take care of yourselves and each other. And do what the doctor tells you.

And if you have a little extra (time, energy, stuff), please consider sharing some of it with the American Cancer Society. They do amazing work supporting people with cancer and their families, as well as supporting research so that maybe fewer people will have to miss their dads (moms, siblings, cousins, friends...).

You get the picture. Thanks for listening.

Abstinence FAIL

My niece and I were chuckling (well, laughing out loud, really) over news coverage of a U.S. Congressman who resigned this week over an affair with a staff member.

The most amusing part was that the staffer in question had hosted a video interview with the Congressman on the topic of...wait for it...abstinence.

My niece turned a video still I found online of that fine piece of work into a motivational poster that she said I could share:

It Has Come to This

I wasn't aware of this incident until I saw this piece at Digby's blog.

During Monday's Phillies game, a person in attendance at Citizen Bank Park ran onto the field while the Cardinals were up to bat. According to those at the game, this fan was promptly tasered.

This is just amazing to me. We seem to have lost all sense of proportion. Having a young child myself, I'm used to hearing kids threaten death and dismemberment for all sorts of minor transgressions. That's developmentally appropriate at a certain age, but eventually we're supposed to grow out of it as we come to understand both physical and social realities. By the time we're adults (or even teens), we are supposed to have developed some sense of measured response.

But really. Fans (usually inebriated ones) have been running onto fields for a long time: At least as long as games have been televised. And I am old enough to remember the "streaking" fad. For those who are fans and want to watch the game, these things are an annoyance, but a minor one at most. You have a delay while the intruder eludes a few security guards or police for a few minutes, then they subdue the person, remove them from the premises, and the game resumes.

In my experience, the intruder usually eludes being captured for a few minutes, probably causing a little embarrassment for the pursuer, but truly nothing of consequence is happening here.

So why is it even remotely reasonable to use a weapon of any kind, much less a taser, to subdue such a person? Delaying a sporting event isn't a serious offense. No one is in serious danger of attack (though there have been assaults on players an coaches, nothing that remotely justifies this kind of response to someone just running around). Embarrassing security personnel isn't smart, but again, it can't possibly justify subjecting the interloper to this level of physical danger.

[As someone once wrote about the decision to run out on the field, it probably seems like fun at first, but once you get removed from public view, you may get a lesson on differing interpretations of the term "reasonable force," especially if you've made the security guard or off-duty police officer run around and look a little foolish. But that was talking about a little roughness, not electrical shocks.]

My hat is off to Digby for her ongoing coverage of the taser issue. The taser is a great example of how our society has become inured to violence and torture and how the threshold for these things has gotten ridiculously low. Are we really so culturally immature that we believe this kind of behavior is reasonable?

Climate Change and Economics

I nearly always enjoy reading Paul Krugman's work. Not only is he a brilliant thinker, but he's a very good writer, with a knack for making complex subjects understandable.

So I was most pleased to see his piece today on climate change.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. It was climate change and what we referred to at the time as the "greenhouse effect" that led me to study environmental science in college and to focus on the public policy aspects of that field. The intersection of science, economics, and politics is a fascinating, complex, and rewarding area, but not without its frustrations.

I recommend that you read Krugman's article. He concludes with what I think is meant to be a hopeful summary:

We know how to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. We have a good sense of the costs — and they’re manageable. All we need now is the political will.

Unfortunately, as he demonstrates earlier in his analysis, political will is hard to come by these days. Recent events haven't demonstrated to me that either the American body politic or its "leaders" have either the understanding or the backbone to make difficult choices. I fear we will dither ourselves into catastrophe.

Units of Measure

And while I'm uncharacteristically blogging, I ought to mention another fine Berkeley guy: Art Rosenfeld. He started out as a particle physicist, but the energy crisis of the 70s spurred him to turn his attention to energy efficiency.

He's now retiring after a long and distinguished career, and some of his colleagues have proposed naming a unit of measure (specifically a measure of energy conservation) after him.

Regardless of whether that takes hold, Rosenfeld has had an enormous influence over our world. For example, his research on reducing the size of the ballasts used by fluorescent lights led to the development of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), which currently save huge amounts of electricity.

Rosenfeld also gets a lot of credit for the "California miracle," also known as the "Rosenfeld effect": California's per-capita electricity consumption has remained essentially the same since 1970, where that of the rest of the country has increased by about half. Through a combination of technologies, building codes, and other public policies, California has led the way, largely propelled by Rosenfeld.

My wife, who works in energy efficiency, got to go to Rosenfeld's retirement dinner this week, and it must have been a great event. His influence will continue to be felt both in the state and throughout the world.

Remembering Mario

No, not Super Mario: Mario Savio.

I never got to meet Mario, but as a student at Berkeley, I lived in a world that he helped shape. Walking through Sproul Plaza almost daily, it was easy to see the impact of Savio and the Free Speech Movement.

Even today, the FSM is remembered at the cafe in the undergraduate library.

Anyway, the linked review from The Nation is interesting, and makes me want to read the book.

What's in a Name?

A friend just pointed out to me that one can look up one's name in the Urban Dictionary. I thought the results for my nickname were particularly hilarious. I quite like:

2. v. as 'chard something up'. To, by error or misfortune, destroy iredeemably a situation that might otherwise have been promising or a suitestormme (see suitestormme).

Life is fun sometimes.

Crocodile Tears--For What?

Yesterday, the "big news" was that Mark McGwire finally admitted to using steroids during his baseball career.

Frankly, I have trouble seeing this as anything newsworthy, other than maybe the fact that a baseball team is actually hiring McGwire to work for them again. I'm all for forgiveness and redemption and all that, but really, you don't go hiring Al Capone to run BATF.

OK, here's my big problem with the McGwire admission: he's not sorry. He cheated through much of his career, and he clearly feels bad about it, but seems to think he was doing it for a good reason, so we should just forgive him. This, for me, was the money quote:

“I did this for health purposes. There’s no way I did this for any type of strength purposes,” he said.

Uh-huh. And why is that OK? You weren't trying to be a stronger ballplayer, you just wanted to recover quicker, or heal or prevent injuries. It's not like that would give him a competitive advantage over other players or anything. And then, he doesn't even take responsibility--it was the times, you see:

“It was a wrong thing what I did. I totally regret it. I just wish I was never in that era,” he said.

Yeah, because if there hadn't been those illegal drugs tempting you, you just would have lived with your injuries, put your tail between your legs and gone quietly home while someone else played ball. Bull. You cheated. You knew what you were doing, and you did it anyway.

And finally, the weaseling in his press statement about why he didn't come clean five years ago when he "testified" before Congress:

After all this time, I want to come clean. I was not in a position to do that five years ago in my congressional testimony, but now I feel an obligation to discuss this and to answer questions about it.

Uh, "not in a position"? What better position than when you have the attention of the whole country, broadcast live on C-SPAN and ESPN? I guess it's better to wait five years, then put out a press statement to clear the air for your new job. After all, it's all about you.

And that's bad. But even worse to me is the guy who is hiring him, again: Tony LaRussa. LaRussa was McGwire's manager when he broke into the majors with Oakland, then brought him to St. Louis later on. And now he's hiring him as his batting coach in St. Louis. LaRussa has insisted until yesterday that he had no knowledge, no idea that McGwire was juicing all those years. That doesn't even come close to passing the sniff test. LaRussa has been covering for McGwire (and therefore himself) for years. LaRussa has a fabulous (and IMHO, inflated) reputation as a baseball "genius" (I mean, he has a law degree from Florida State!) and humanitarian (largely for his work in animal rescue). But somehow he was unaware that the man he worked with for fifteen years was ballooning himself like a cartoon character and then lying about it. I offer you the opinions of baseball columnists Terence Moore and Ray Ratto. Neither seems to find LaRussa credible on this issue, either.

I have been accused of having a blind spot on this issue, having rooted for Barry Bonds for so many years. I will admit having suspicions for a long time, despite Bonds' denials. I will say this: he has been consistent with his stance that he did not knowingly use banned or illegal substances. That may not prove true, but I have no knowledge one way or the other. What I do know is that it was apparent during that era that some, indeed many, players were juicing. The fact that Bonds stood out among them does not diminish for me the achievements. He was the exciting player in an era of exciting players, some or all of whom may have been enhanced.

To me the bottom line is that one can never know all the details of who did what or just how much it helped them. McGwire claims he would have hit just as many home runs without enhancements. We'll never know, and that's too bad. What we do know is what happened: We saw, we cheered, we enjoyed. It's time to stop looking for which numbers need to have asterisks by them. Instead of moralizing about the past, we should learn from it and move on.

Baseball and other sports have always had their share of people trying to find advantages outside the game itself: doctored balls, amphetamines, steroids, altered bats. In a "game of inches," even tiny changes can make a big difference.

What we need to look out for is those who excuse or condone such behavior. People like Tony LaRussa or Bud Selig, the owners, managers, agents, and players who either supported or feigned ignorance of the drug problem that was making them rich, need to come clean about their culpability.

My Broken State, Part WAY Too Many

It's not getting any better.

The Left Coaster has a good piece today about the ongoing death spiral that is California these days:

Anyway, that’s basically it, nothing has been solved in California in all of 2009, there are no solutions in sight to solve any element of our revenue problems, and we will continue to abuse our little people in a stupid, cruel twist of human life that was never, ever necessary. As always, it was so easy to be so much better than this, the problems we face aren’t difficult to solve, but the Republicans have abandoned public service altogether, they’ll bring all of us down if they can’t get their way.

This on the tail of last month's news that California's roads, once the envy of the world, have almost slipped to the worst in the country. And the worst are in the major metropolitan areas.

Mark Watt, executive director of Transportation California, a labor and heavy construction industry group that works with TRIP, said the state's failure to raise the gasoline tax since 1990 combined with the recession-related decline in driving leaves the state with far too little money to maintain and rehabilitate highways.

"We've got to come to grips that we have to pay for it or we have to live with it," he said. "We need new revenues to dig through the backlog we're building."

It just keeps rolling. Downhill. You don't get what you don't pay for....

Terror, Paranoia, and Silliness

I always wondered when the Underpants Gnomes were going to go bad. Apparently many others fear this a lot more than I do.

As usual, Tom Tomorrow has his finger on the crazy.