You dirty Jew! You big chicken!

Okay, Red Herring to a dinosaur? He was just discovered in the Gobi, his name means "Egg-Stealer," and he's been called a sixteen foot chicken.

So why not.


Meanwhile, here in the City, there's a dirty City Supervisor named Ed Jew (a Chinese guy, and no, not a Jew.) What he's done is pretty unreal; that is, he's gone to great lengths to defraud everyone, and it seems so unnecessary. Love them politix.

-Zed

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"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
-Albert Einstein

London 2012 logo II

...Just to give you a better idea of how the London 2012 Olympic logo is meant to Move And Shake Its Thing.

Red Herring today goes to... who[m]ever thinks "its," above, should get an apostrophe.

London 2012 promo vid:



...And, just for fun, a little Presidential music video. Because you've earned it:



-Zed

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"I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here."
-George W. Bush

As the checked ball bounces

Nice: FIFA doesn't consult Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, or Mexico before banning higher-altitude sites for FIFA qualifiers. No word about them banning heat, or cold, or bad refereeing for that matter.

These are sites that have held such matches since time out of mind. On the other hand, their GDP are fractions, respectively, of Germany or South Africa (sites of the last and the next World Cup.)

In Tech, authorities say that their arrest of one man may produce noticibly less Spam in your inbox. Red Herring to one Robert Alan Soloway, since it's too late to get Karl Rove for his direct mail fodder.

Politics, politics, and soccer. Where's an Italian man crying for his mama when you need one?

The thing about Michael Vick and dog fighting is, the NFL recruits brutes, and turns them into animals. Ray Lewis? Pacman Jones? Bill Romanowski?

Bruce Jenkins suggests that these guys play together on the Bad News Bearz. I just hope Papa Sheffield can keep them away from Elijah Dukes.

And Mark Cuban and a Google exec want to challenge the NFL's supremacy? Iiinteresting...

-Zed

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"No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another."
-John Dewey

Bush, Miss USA tougher than Armando

George W. Bush talks tough, and sanctions Sudan for Darfur atrocities. It's not like the man thought of it himself, but still -- good to see.

Incidently, an obscure National Security Directive is passed, saying that in case of emergency, Bush becomes "Super-Mega Lord Decider?"

Dictator?

Oh, kay! In other news...

Why go to Stanford (or the Army) when you don't belong to Stanford (or the Army)?

Presumably because it's more expensive than Cal.

More in the South Bay: the 49ers are creeping closer to the $200 million mark -- in how much they're asking from the City of Santa Clara. If I were a Santa Claran, I'd be giddy, too -- but these things rarely work out well for the municipality.

Meanwhile, hard to stay off local baseball. Today's Red Herring goes to Armando Benitez, who at least seems like a decent guy. An overly sensitve guy, to be sure, with a heart of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. (With apologies to Miss USA, who did a great job recovering after literally falling on her ass in the Miss Universe pageant.)

But last night's game typifies it -- up a run, it's Walk-Balk-Bunt-Balk to score the tying run, Home Run to end it.

End it. Please, Brian Sabean -- end it.

-Zed

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“The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.”
-Jacques Benigne Bossuel

Greenland makes its point

People who notice, have noticed that Greenland has started dumping twice as much as into the ocean lately. Meanwhile, the first thing Bush did was pull out of the Kyoto treaty.

If Bush, Sr. had pulled out, of course, we wouldn't have that particular problem...

And if you like a great conspiracy theory, here's another chance to click that Bush, Sr. link.

You mean a Bush and a Bin Laden were conducting a business meeting when the planes hit the towers?

Okay, enough of that. We've already established that Bush is the Red Herring record holder. Moments like this are why sports were invented.

But, seeing as I don't want to enter the Yankee-centric world of Jason Giambi's admission fallout or Roger Clemens presumed guilt...


Better yet, how about probing the artistic, semi-conscious recesses of the mind?

And that's what I have for you on a Tuesday morning.

By the way, want to hear the first-ever album from a 70-some year old music maven? Check out Peter Gammons' album. Not just for the novelty, it's a staple in my rotation.

-Zed

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"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
-Miles Davis

My blood runs cold: Topps being sold

It seems Topps, the venerable baseball card company, is up for grabs. It's too bad; our memories are being sold, as well (My angel is the centerfold!) I must say, I never did get the etopps concept -- real money paid for imaginary cards you can't turn over or stain with gum. For those wondering: this is what it means to grow up American.


Meanwhile, Upper Deck, in an effort to dominate the trading card market, actually made an unsolicited bid for the company well in excess of Michael Eisner's. Folks my generation still remember Upper Deck as the spiffy new kid on the block, which means -- hang on, I have to go take my Alzheimer's meds.

In politics, a record-setting 4,125th Red Herring to your president (I sure didn't vote for him), George W. Bush. Bush was warned by advisors that, after an Iraq invasion, Al Qaida would use Iraq as a recruiting ground, and Iran would try to leverage the region.

In the face of this evidence, Bush says he still "firmly believes the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power." Making Bush the only president to live in a vacuum since Hoover.

Get it? Hoover.

-Zed

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“The enemy isn’t conservatism. The enemy isn’t liberalism. The enemy is bullshit."
-Lars-Erik Nelson

Wage hike quietly passes

So, Congress approved -- and President Bush will sign the first federal minimum wage hike in nearly a decade -- a boost over more than $2 per hour.

The story provides an interesting, if confounding, glimpse at the American political process: Democrats pushed hard for it, and the White House against it (it's been decades since Republicans supported a wage boost) but in the end, the Dems stuck it on a "must-pass" bill, along with some business tax breaks the White House also doesn't like.

So in the end, you have Democrats approving tax breaks, and Republicans opposing them; an article that says Bush will sign despite disliking both measures involved (see which way the wind now blows?) because of a must-pass item that's not described at all.

If you're confused, hey, so am I.

Red Herring thrown straight up in the air. The guy cleaning it up now gets $7.25 for his efforts.

-Zed

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"It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor."
-D.H. Lawrence

Humming at an end?

Hummer Bummer?

The first private citizen to own a Hummer? My Governor and yours, Arnold Schwazenegger. (Dead Red Fish to that man.) And now there's word that someone, perhaps on his way to the dealership right now, will soon be the last.


Yes, you do remember me publishing a piece on this. Now it seems there were finally enough protests about the actual illegality of them on California roads, the immorality of their environmental impact, and-

...What?

Apparently that wasn't it.

Apparently, sales were down.

Oh, well. To borrow the title of the Giants' 1987 team video: Humm Baby, It Was Fun.

Virgin Airs:

It looks like Virgin America is finally American enough for American lobbyists -- I mean, lawmakers.

Will non-American Richard Branson topple another industry?

Meanwhile, here I am, blogging to you (shh!) from the Giants press box. I'm actually watching two of the greatest centerfielders of all time -- Willie Mays and Condoleezza Rice -- chat each other up in owner Peter Magowan's box.

The presscateers all wanted to know whether the a crowd would boo Condi (line of the night: Condi is the woman Bush always hoped Colin Powell would become.) They never got the chance; she stayed safely off the JumboTron and in Willie's lap.

[Editor's note: they did get their chance when she left the game, escorted up Aisle 121 by her Secret Service detail, in the 8th inning -- to beat parking, presumably. The lefties did not disappoint, booing her roundly.]

Politics make strange bedfellows.

-Zed

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"I loved the game. I loved the competition. But I never had any fun."
-Carl Yastrzemski

Obligatory Falwell-NASCAR post

Jerry Fallwell died. Good thing Mark Morford always has something to say. Falwell, if you'll pardon the comparison, was to the Religious Right what Neil Young was to grunge.


Thanks, Jer'.

Not to speak ill of the dead, so I'll give him this: he was great as himself in The People Vs. Larry Flynt.

(Oops: that wasn't him!)

The WNBA enters its second decade trying to make news. How's this for news: whoopee-doo. We're all behind Title IX; it's just that if you're running it out there as professional sports now, we want it to be... um... entertaining.

In other news, broadcast golf and NASCAR still exist, so I'm obviously missing something.

Oh -- and speaking of sports that aren't interesting, have you seen the extra-weird cycling news today? The stage is the dirt-dry Floyd Landis doping hearings, and the scandal involves threats of revelations of sexual abuse of former champions... I'll let you read the piece.

Work's on overtime so I'm out for today. Peas.

-Zed

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"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."
-Jerry Falwell

A blow for Wolfowitz

...Which was also the headline for the Chronicle's online piece in which the Bush White House, in a rare move, is slowly distancing itself from the original "architect" of the Iraq War. I was hoping the "blow" was the kind that's guaranteed to cause a shitstorm in that particular arena.

(Just a thought: what do Iraqis call it? The War of American Aggression, or something like that. Which, if you think for even a moment, tends to confuse it with lots of other wars.)

In other War Czar news, the Bushies finally have a new one: one of those former generals finally said yes. A big Red Herring to Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. Yes, its best to buy in low, and sell high. But when a spate of good military men start saying no to their president, you have to wonder why.

(Incidently, Lieutenant General? They couldn't find anyone with full rank?)

This one's oldish, but hey, I just found out about it: the family behind In-N-Out Burger, famous for treating their workers fairly and printing bible chapter and verse on their soda cups, have lost their matriarch. Will the company go corporate, and can it continue to stand apart?


In other business news, JetBlue has ridden an admirable business model to mid-sized success, but faces an identity crisis. After the ouster of the quirky entrepreneur who set them apart in the first place, another corporate question mark looms.

Why so much business today? Dunno. I did crib some of these ideas from class last night.

Tomorrow: half-naked girls dancing on tables.

Woo-hoo!

-Zed

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"You can drag a horticulture, but you can't make her think."
-Dorothy Parker (asked to use "horticulture" in a sentence)

Mooning over it all

Thoughts over my Cheerios (no relation to Moons Over My Hammy)...


No real surprise: MySpace launches a dozen video channels...

Good company, bad company: in hindsight, Oracle got an absolute bargain on naming the Warriors' arena. For all the mentions of Oracle over national air in recent weeks, the Warriors actually see less than $2 mil a year...

And, just for the heck of it: Bill Clinton is making campaign ads for Hillary, while not bothering to hide his new squeeze. There's hope yet for Newsom.

Rest easy.

-Zed

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"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base."
-Dave Barry

Alternative fuels: just the beginning

Why would I read about a revolutionary new technology, said to be every bit as good as hybrids, and lament, "You know the oil industry is behind this?"

Because, quite simply, the "intelligent" (telematic) car is based on conventional fuel.

[Sure enough, I revisit the article for more details, and am delayed by a Shell banner ad!]

The way telematics work: they "look ahead" to predict and avoid traffic slow-downs and restarts. And of course, the more of these telematic cars are on the road doing this, according to Their calculations, the better they will work, until they've actually surpassed hybrids, although they look ahead only a few seconds.

It just goes to show you, They produce the bare minimum to consumers, until a competetive alternative comes up.

Again, more on this to come.

-Zed

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“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
-Oscar Wilde

Hill to Bush: your war deauthorized

Hillary Clinton and the esteemed Robert Byrd have come up with a new way to combat the administration on Iraq: very simply, they've written a bill stating that the Senate's ill-advised authorization to invade in October 2002 shall expire after five years.

It postures the Seante as a deciding body again (since they blew it the first time) and means the administration can't talk about "pullouts" and "artificial timetables" without a measure of responsibility.

A five year old and stinky Red Herring to Congress, for rolling over doggystyle in the first place. But, this represents the best in election year maneuvering, if you ask me. It actually holds both sides more accountable.

-Zed

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"Your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers."
-Virginia Woolf

Political football on steroids

As columnists go, you gotta love SF Chron writer Gwen Knapp. This gem from her today, on the budding Mets' clubhouse steroid brouhaha -- which, by the way, could very well be the biggest thing since the original BALCO raid:

The Attorney General supports torturing people who have never been convicted of a crime, so why does the Justice Department balk at embarrassing an elite athlete? This isn't reasonable discretion. It's jock-sniffing. It calls to mind all the times that an athlete has been let off for a crime and then signed autographs for the judge and jury.

Excellent context. It reminds us that the Bud Seligs of the worlds... and the George Mitchells (former Senate Majority Leader now in charge of ferreting out alleged Bad Guys)... and the Federal Prosecutors are different animals, with very different motives and constituencies.

So when you ask, "Will they get Bonds," or, "Will they get anyone else" -- (and, hopefully, "Is anyone asking that last question?") -- remember that much of it depends on your definition of 'they.'

-Zed

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"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
-Bill Clinton

A poliblog day

I'm afraid it's one of those days. Red Herring to anyone with a tie and a campaign button. (I'm so glad I don't do this every day! My poli brother must be crazy.)

As Iraq defies the odds by worseneing, Democrats are looking at dragging Condi Rice into the Bush / Gonzalez / We finally have some politcal clout, so were getting political / hearings. Rice makes Hillary Clinton look like Carmen Miranda.


Bush handlers are claiming the President didn't know the truth about Pat Tillman's death. For just this sort of eventuality, one imagines.

The thing about the culture of fear, that leads to such apocolyptic satires as the many fine works of George Orwell, or 2005's V for Vendetta, is that it begins with real enemies.

-Zed

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"There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."
-James Thurber

Fart beats book

Pretty sweet: a trussed-up Red Herring with the trimmings to Alec Holden, from Epsom in Surrey, England. (Why is it most places in England sounds like Hobbit lairs? Could it be that J.R.R. Tolkien was British?)

It seems Holden, born April 24, 1907, beat the system by betting with a bookmaker ten years ago that he would reach his hundredth birthday.

Says a rep for the bookie: "These age wagers are starting to cost us a fortune, and from now on we are going to push out the age to 110." (Yes, they've lost this bet before.)

Meanwhile, in Tech, a little company called Fon (backed by a bigger company called Time Warner) is spreading a new model to America.


It seems Fon's product, a little gizmo called La Fonera, allows users not only to log on, but to share their own bandwidth -- as much or as little of it as they like -- with passersby, neighbors, and so on, creating almost-free wireless hotspots anywhere.

The plan is an interesting response by Time Warner (and Skype/EBay, among other investors) to the phenomenon of cities (San Francisco has long discussed this) offering up free wi-fi to anyone within city limits.

Meanwhile, Fon actually took the liberty of distributing 6,000-odd devices to anyone who lived right by a Starbucks.

Far out, Daddy-O.

Also, more on the Pat Tillman investigation in CNN's headline story, here. Tillman's brother was a fellow Ranger, also deployed, but not on site when Pat went down.

And finally, a nice political cartoon today, in the Examiner, which is good to read sometimes, because people think you're smart if you have ink on your hands.

There's a big truck outside the White House, labelled "January 20, 2009." A voice from the White House says, "I hate artificial timetables."

Double half-caf latte with cinnamon soy sprinkles: $4.50.
Legal use of someone else's wireless (24 hours): $2.
Getting PA-AID for turning 100: Priceless.

-Zed

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"I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity."
-Bill Veeck

Today's fishy snippets

Briefly:

Boris Yeltsin died.

Karl Rove is debating Sheryl Crow... um, seriously?

The Warriors triumphed.

Can the Giants really win nightly on shutdown starting pitching and a Bonds home run? As for eyewitness evidence, Bonds looks far more nimble than we've seen him the last two years.

And, just for the heck of it, NewsoftheWeird.

'Til soon,

-Zed

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"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work."
-Robert Frost

Tillman truth seeping out

Jesus. Red Fish all over the page today.

Today we revisit the Pat Tillman story, in which an NFL star and Army hero turns into a symbol for all that is wrong about politics and war.

Apparently as soon as Tillman was shot and killed by friendly fire, the Army calmly created a quarantine-style blackout around the entire Afghani base, designed to severely restrict the flow of information.

I blogged on this a few weeks ago, and will revisit it as the story develops. This is one of those things that don't take a lot of editorializing by me; if you can't figure out the significance... well, what do they say? If you don't know who the sucker is at the table, maybe it's you.

Meanwhile, it is now legal in Texas to shoot and kill someone, say, attempting to break into your car. (Thanks to the indomitable Mark Morford for that one.)

And in other news, for those of you who'd prefer to hear a Japanese man say "the fire would have been right under your buttocks," check out this bidet recall story.

Nice click there. Don't work too hard.

-Zed

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"Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off."
-Bill Veeck

McCain campaign la bomb-a

Red Fish here. It seems we've gotten to the point where serious presidential candidates can joke about the next series of "pre-emptive" bombings, as John McCain made light of U.S.-Iranian tensions. (Click the link; Drudge posted the video.) That's right, he actually sang "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann.

And you know what? It's pretty funny.

-Zed

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"We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap."
-Kurt Vonnegut

Around the city; around the globe

Around the horn today.

From International:

Chicago has pulled something of an upset, being selected as the USOC's official entrant into the 2016 Summer Olympic bouillabaisse. It just goes to show, the door was wide open for San Francisco.


Will Chicago win the IOC bid? In a word, no. Chicago ain't exactly a breezy slab of beach, and despite an impressive downtown Renaissance, has little of the caché of America's coastal cities. What's more, practically all the major venues will be temporary, which runs contrary to the IOC's goals.


Forced to bet, and given that Rio has practically locked up the '14 World Cup, leaving them uninterested in the '16 Games, where would I place my money? How about Tokyo?

From National:

Bill Clinton came to San Francisco ("I jump at any chance to come back to San Francisco," he intimated; in seven-plus years, his successor has never been.) The former president, in a talk about health care, pointed out that the U.S. spends over $800 billion (a very hard amount to fathom, indeed) more than Canada or Switzerland on health care every year, yet insures fewer of its citizens, and ranks just 37th in the world in overall health care.

Said Clinton, "We are great about treating sickness, but we are lousy at keeping people well." It's an excellent point, and one you Sport Managers would also be wise to heed. Assuming, that is, that "free market" logic, which implies that this need will soon be met, holds true.

From Local:

In another free market battle, the S. F. Chronicle reports that San Francisco MUNI drivers are automatically -- it's in their contract -- the highest or second-highest paid drivers in the nation. Does this handcuff the City, and decrease the drivers' incentives to perform? Their union leader doesn't think so.

It's reminiscent of state-level problems, where decades of voter-approved ballot measures hogtie legislators every year before they even show up for duty. But that's okay. California, like San Francisco, is doing just fine.

And, From Sports:

Live in Oakland, Eric Chavez steals the unstealoffable Andy Pettitte blind. You love seeing stuff like that.

The A's are squaring off in another war against the Yanks... Warriors roaring towards the playoffs!.. Sharkeys already battling in the postseason... And the Giants... snowed-out doubleheader in Pittsburgh. And Barry Zito is said to be dating Hilary Duff.

Which is at least a little ironic, given that his honeymoon in San Francisco is officially over.


By the way, happy Jackie Robinson Day around baseball. There's a great article here, among the glut of Jackie Robinson anniversary pieces. Baseball failing to market its players as well as the other leagues? Absolutely.

You'll notice, every particularly clever or high-end commercial featuring a Derek Jeter, is actually done by Nike, or some such. Meanwhile, if Dontrelle Willis faces C. C. Sabathia in interleague play, there's the slimmest of chances that any black pitcher will start a game anywhere else on the continent.

Let's hope that Inner Cities program you keep hearing about -- in Compton -- is as good as advertised. The next three, so we're told, are already being built.

Percentage of African-American players in MLB in 1975: 27.5%. In 2007: 8.4%.

Let's keep working, folks. That Mays kid could play.

-Zed

"Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be."
-Kurt Vonnegut