Come to think of it, maybe Bill Mueller too. Look at his slugging percentage drop.

In any case, I think this Millar's last year under contract, so he's gone. Maybe Mueller too. That alone would be great for the Sox offense.

I read a column lauding the wildcard, touting the great race in the American League and bashing "pesky purists" who had opposed the wild card. I for one, don't like the wild card. I think the best way to choose the best teams in the league is to play the entire season.

The problem with this guy's argument is the specific piece of evidence he cites: the race in the American League. The race actually shows the weakness of the wild card. As he notes, the Sox, Yankees, and the Tribe are all tied with a week to go. It's going to be a close finish. Two teams will advance, one team will go home.

Now imagine if there was no wild card? Well, the American League would have an even *better* race. The Sox, Yankees, and the Tribe would be all tied in the old American League East with a week to go. It would be a fantastic finish. One team would advance, two teams would go home. Note the difference: only one team would advance. More pressure; more tension.


But hey, the guy's a sports columnist. No need for actual substantive analysis! In fact, the guy will probably write the exact same column next year.

Before the season we all thought that Michigan would have a terrific offense and a mediocre defense. That's what I thought as well. I was wrong. Our defense is pretty good, but the offense is crappy. It seems that Henne has regressed--maybe he's missing Braylon Edwards. Also, Steve Breaston hasn't done much all year. Maybe it's the loss of Mike Hart.

Against Wisconsin we generated nothing the whole second half, but for one flea-flicker trick play. I think our defense did a pretty good job, but it was on the field the whole game. They could only hold for so long.

The Sox are done. I can't imagine them coming back after blowing a game like tonight's.

And holy crap is Rita ever a big hurricane.....

It is distasteful for me to note this, because Papi is my favorite player in baseball at the moment (I know, I know, just like everyone else in Red Sox Nation), but I have to admit I'd vote for ARod for MVP in the American League.

Ortiz has had a great year, but ARod has been maybe even better offensively (same slugging, higher average, better speed) and plays a great third base too.

I don't think Michigan is the #4 team in the country. There aren't many teams with better offenses, but the defense looks very average. Northern Illinois shouldn't get 400 yards against Michigan.

I really like New Orleans. But now I wonder whether that sentence should be in the past tense.

What will New Orleans be in the future? At this point, according to www.nola.com (great website), the news is bad and getting worse. Water levels still rising. Levees still broken. I'm no expert, but I figure that having water on both sides of a levee is only going to make it weaker. The articles say 80% of the city is under water. The Superdome, where people were sheltering, has water on the floor. As the water isn't going anywhere anytime soon (water level won't drop until the pumps start working; the pumps are under water and in any case, the levees still have holes in them), I have to think that most of the houses in the city will have to be destroyed as uninhabitable when the water finally goes down in a week (two weeks? a month?). They can't be saved, and they'll rot anyway. And the guns are coming out, as the looters are busy. ("Send in the National Guard! Wait, they're in Tikrit...")

Some of the city will, of course, be rebuilt. What will it look like? Will it ever be the same? I can't imagine it will.

Gotta add Dontrelle Willis to the Cy Young mix, along with Carpenter and Clemens. I still go with Carpenter. Granted Clemens has a better ERA, but Carpenter's pitched 20 more innings and had one bad start all year. In April. Clemens has only one complete game, and Dontrelle Willis has a few bad starts, although he has dropped half a run from his ERA in the last month.

Scratch that. Maybe Timlin's not such a good idea either.

Yesterday I was talking with someone, someone I know and respect, who still believes there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. On the one hand, it's surprising, because it's been well known for over a year that no such link existed. The point isn't even debatable anymore. I mean, more than a year ago, Colin Powell said so in the New York Times. Even Bush admitted it, almost two year ago! But plenty of people still believe it now.

But I made this point before and I'll make it again. It's like the Gulf of Tonkin. The American people were told that our ships had been attacked by the communist Vietnamese. We believed the government. But it never happened.
Same here. We were sold a bill of goods. Well, several bills of goods. One was the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (remember them?). Another was that Iraq had connections to Al Qaeda. For that matter, another was that the war would be fast a cheap (all together now, "HA HA funny!"). Years later, after untold lives have been lost or ruined, it turns out that they lied to us about the Gulf of Tonkin, and they lied to us about Iraq too. I just hope we're not still there is another ten years.....

I was reading about a new initiative to build laptops for $100 and distribute them to Africa so kids there can have computers.

I suppose it's a good cause, and it's obviously a sexy, headline-grabbing solution. But I was in Niger last year and the people in my sister's village need $100 laptops like a fish needs a bicycle. Miles from the nearest road, much less the nearest source of electricity, it's an isolated place.

Niger is, of course, an extreme case, but it isn't going to be pulled out of poverty by cheap computing power. The most important thing is to reduce the size of families. There are just too many people. I read that when he was vice president, Al Gore ordered someone to track the most important factors in reducing a country's growth rate. Turns out that the biggest one was educating girls. It's not as flashy as cheap laptops running Linux, but it would be great if a similar effort was made to ensure that every girl in Niger went to high school.

Bush:

I'd make it a goal to make sure that local folks got to make the decision as to whether or not they said creationism has been a part of our history and whether or not people ought to be exposed to different theories as to how the world was formed.

Awful. Should kids also be exposed to different theories of gravity?

I wonder. Are kids in India and China wasting their time creationism? If anyone has any doubts about why American kids have crappy science scores, direct these questions to our president.

I dunno. Maybe it's time to give Timlin a shot....

It turns out the Iraqis are having a bit of trouble with their constitution. As with so many things (reconstruction, insurgents, democracy, oil, etc. etc. etc.), I think the administration has vastly underestimated the difficulty of this task. True to character, they neglected the difficulties. Had they been paying attention, they may have noticed another country that had its own trouble coming to grip with the issue of federalism. After seven years of failure, they tried again. That didn't really get the job done either--sixty one years later the country nearly destroyed itself in an astonishingly brutal civil war.

The population of the United States was 31 million in 1860, and about 620,000 people died. Iraq has about 26 million people (hey, surely we can trust the CIA about Iraq, right?). I don't know that anyone can really say how many civilians have did, but this site says 25,000. Will Iraq dissolve into civil war? I bet it does, unfortunately. And I bet the issue will be federalism. Just like here.

On my way to the train in the morning I walk past Wholefoods, which always has a security guard out front. As I walked past him today a homeless guy happened to approach him at the same time. The following conversation ensued:

Drug-addled homeless guy: "Hey, so'oze goona win Cy Young?"
Security guard: "hmm"
Homeless guy: "Huwza Carpenter fu da Cardinals?"

Then I walked out of range.

Obviously, the security guard should have pointed out that it's only early August, and there's a ton of baseball yet to play. As a Cardinals fan, I was happy to see Chris Carpenter getting some recognition, even if I was surprised that the homeless guy is so up on National League pitching. But Carpenter's having a terrific year.

If the season ended now, would he win the Cy Young? I think it's either him or Clemens. Carpenter has more wins, but Clemens has a better ERA, and it's not Clemens' fault that he's had crappy run support. Clemens hasn't had a truly bad start all year. I'd still give it to Carpenter, though, because of the innings. Clemens has been great, but he's gone eight innings only twice. Carpenter has five complete games (six nine inning starts, but one of his starts went ten), four shutouts, and has pitched at least eight innings nine times.

It's still close, as Smoltz, Dontrelle Willis, Roy Oswalt, and Pedro Martinez are still in the hunt. Livan Hernandez has been, as always, a horse (also nine starts of at least eight innings), but I just don't think he's going to get too many more wins. I see Washington fading.

In any case, I'm happy our homeless population is following baseball.

I always figured that Rafael Palmiero would make it to the Hall of Fame as the ultimate monument to being Pretty Good for a Very Long Time. His career numbers will add up impressively, but has he ever been all that good? He played in a grand total of four All Star Games. He never won an MVP, and only three times was he in the top ten. Forget about being the best player in the league, was he ever the best player on his own team? Ever? Was he ever the best player at his own position?

And now he's been suspended for steroids. If I were a voter, it would be a tough call. Can you vote against a guy with 500 homers and 3000 hits? I dunno. But if I was ever going to vote against someone with those stats, Palmiero would be the guy.

It sounds like the Iraqi government is making noises about having us leave, as soon as next year. Great! However, if Iraq then dissolves into civil war, have we not failed?

For that matter, if the new Iraqi constitution, written by Iraqis, implements the worst aspects of sharia law, have we really succeeded?

Last December I visited Niger, where my sister and brother in law were Peace Corps Volunteers. Yes, the same Niger that is starving.

The people of Niger are unquestionably the most generous I have ever met. In my sister's village, Sabon Gida, THEY brought US more food than we could eat, every night. This is no hyperbole, we stuffed ourselves and could eat no more, and they kept bringing us food. (Maradi, where the BBC story was bylined, is about 120 miles east of Sabon Gida.) I am now faced with the immensely terrible thought that the people who brought us food are now starving themselves.

Niger is not the sort of country where the people starve while the president buys new fighter planes and has a villa in the south of France. Right before we got there they had a peaceful and fair election. The President seems to be a honest man who has improved things in the country. The only sin of the Nigeriens is to be born in a land with too many people, not enough rain, and no real exports except uranium and onions--and I bet there aren't even any onions this year.

If you've been thinking about this at all, I urge you to make a donation.

My sister and my brother in law recommend CARE (https://donate.care.org/05/170420990000/) and Catholic Relief Services (http://www.crs.org/make_a_gift/individual/index.cfm). I encountered people from both organizations and neither one is spending money on upkeep of their buildings or lavish salaries of their staff.

I recently saw Wor of the Worlds. On the recommendation of someone who shall remain nameless (but is Tom Lorek's mother's son), who said it was "more craptacular than Independence Day". Now I thought Independence Day was pretty craptacular, so that's a pretty high endorsement.

Revenge of the Sith was better.

War of the Worlds is so silly. It's just dumb. Independence Day (against which it must be compared) had a plot, albeit a plot with holes one could, uh, drive a spaceship through. This didn't even have a plot. It was a dumb movie with annoying unconvincing characters. Dumb dumb dumb.

First Martha Stewart. Now Lil' Kim.

The lesson: Don't Lie To The Feds.