My 2007 Baseball Awards Ballot

Like last year, it looks like I'm too late to vote in the Internet Baseball Awards. Anyway, here are my votes:

American League Most Valuable Player

1. NYA Alex Rodriguez
2. NYA Jorge Posada
3. DET Magglio Ordonez
4. TB Carlos Pena
5. BOS David Ortiz
6. DET Curtis Granderson
7. CLE Victor Martinez
8. CLE C.C. Sabathia
9. CLE Grady Sizemore
10. CAL Vladimir Guerrero

You can't argue with ARod. It's always a challenge to decide how much to value defence, but if Big Papi played 3B with the same skill as Rodriguez, my vote would still have gone to ARod. My impression was that VMart was the most valuable Indian. Honourable Mention: Brian Roberts, Mike Lowell.

National League Most Valuable Player

1. NYN David Wright
2. ATL Chipper Jones
3. PHI Chase Utley
4. FLA Hanley Rameriz
5. MIL Prince Fielder
6. COL Matt Holliday
7. SD Jake Peavy
8. FLA Miguel Cabrera
9. STL Albert Pujols
10. SF Barry Bonds

Unlike the AL, I'm sure you can argue with Wright. And, unlike the AL, all of the batters listed above have somewhat comparable stats. Even Barry Bonds on-based .480 (wow!) in 126 games. I've heard Holliday considered to be a favourite for the award, but the question is, how much does playing in Denver inflate his stats? But, even if they put up the same numbers in neutral parks, I'd go with Wright over Holliday due to his defensive position. Honourable Mention: Jimmy Rollins.

American League Cy Young Award

1. CLE C.C. Sabathia
2. CAL John Lackey
3. OAK Dan Haren
4. CLE Fausto Carmona
5. BOS Josh Beckett

When it comes to choosing a Cy, I tend to favour high IP and low ERA. Sabathia lead the majors in IP, so that's a good place to start. Is there a correlation between high IP and future arm trouble? Will his arm fall off? Considering October, maybe it already has. It felt strange not voting for Johan Santana, but I had Beckett edging him out for 5th. Joba Chamberlain was almost worthy of consideration, believe it or not, giving up 1 ER while striking out 34 in 24 innings.

National League Cy Young Award

1. SD Jake Peavy
2. ARI Brandon Webb
3. LA Brad Penny
4. ATL Tim Hudson
5. ATL John Smoltz

I don't think many will argue with the choice of Jake Peavy. Webb looks to be an obvious choice for #2. After that, it gets murky. Penny, Hudson, and Smoltz all look pretty close to me, along with Roy Oswalt and Aaron Harang.

The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

Considering my thoughts on The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, it might seem strange that I picked up the audio version of The Kalahari Typing School for Men when I saw it it the library. I suppose that there is a lot of stuff at the library that I know nothing about, so I thought I might as well go with something I knew wouldn't be horrible, instead of something totally random.

Maybe I'll do that sometime -- walk in and randomly select an audiobook.

Anyway, Typing is number 4 in the series. Rather than focusing on individual cases, Typing focuses more on relationships:

• Mma Ramotswe is still engaged to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
• Mma Ramotswe's assistant, the single Mma Makutsi, meets a man who seems too good to be true.
• Mma Ramotswe's main case of the book, Mr Molefelo, is looking to correct wrongs he committed in the past.

Overall, the book seemed to have less of a "life in Botswana" flavour, but had more of a story and was more of a journey with people you know. Though slightly different in focus than No. 1, it was about as likable. I'm surprised I only gave that one two stars. I'll give this one two and a half stars out of five.

Gorilla Warfare

When I was young, I would hear news reports about gorilla attacks on villages in Africa, or bouts of gorilla warfare in various places. This scared me. I mean, what if some gorillas escaped from the zoo and decided to attack my house?

I was reminded of these past fears today when I saw a BBC report that an Indian politician died after being attacked by monkeys.

Primates == Scary.

Another Football Player?

High Temperature Athletic Training

Consistently run, work out, or whatever, when it's, say, 25 to 30C (77 to 86F). Of course, you shouldn't over-exert yourself in high temperatures, or low temperatures for that matter. Then, when the temperature falls to 10C (50F), you may be surprised that you're suddenly faster.

Will You Be My Friend?

My Internet time sink of the week is Facebook. Do you have an account there? I created one and am now up to a massive count of 5 friends. I didn't know I had that many.

And it does seem to have the potential to be an addictive time drain, which is, I assume, what advertisers and Wall Street are looking for. There are numerous little applications that you can add to your site depending on your interests. I'm having fun adding pins on a map listing all the cities and towns in the world that I've visited, though I can't say it's all that productive.

Anyway, I don't expect to do a whole lot with my site, and I won't link to it here. But if you have a Facebook account, go ahead and send me a message through it.

Running a Marathon

I've never run a marathon, and the odds are that I never will. I had never even run the distance of a marathon in a week. Until yesterday, that is. I guess you could say that I completed a marathon in about 164:30:00, with lots of rest, sleep, and work breaks in between. If I run that distance next year in 6 days, and do it the following year in 5, maybe I'll be ready to do it in one day around 2013.

Is it the Mormons? The JWs? Worse, it's the Phone Company!

As I was running last night, I saw a few pairs of people walking around the neighbourhood with information, going door-to-door. They were all dressed in white shirts and dark pants. I wondered if they were the Mormons or the Jehovah Witnesses going around. Instead, it turned out to be the Phone Company. Or more precisely, independent contractors trying to get me to sign up for Phone Company services. In my case, their catch was to try to get me to sign up for high-speed Internet service. I thanked the lady for stopping by and asked if she could leave me some literature about the service for me to go over and contact them if I'm interested. Of course, this couldn't be done -- I had to sign up immediately or not at all. This effectively ended our the need for discussion, though we did chat for a while until the nice lady realised that I meant it when I said that I wouldn't sign up on the spot.

Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich

Someone I know is a fan of Evanovich and will read anything she puts out. So, when I saw one of her works available in the audiobook section of the library, I thought I'd give it a try.

I was not particularly impressed, though it got better as it went along.

The story involves everyone's favourite bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. It's nearing Valentine's Day, and her old pal Diesel shows up. A "relationship expert" has been arrested and skipped bail. Diesel makes a deal with Plum: if she fills in for the relationship expert, playing Cupid for her clients so that they'll find true love in time for Valentine's Day, Diesel will let Plum bring her in and get the bounty. So, the possibilities for slightly risqué humour abound as Stephanie travels between lovelorn characters. There's a small bit of a mystery or crime/suspense aspect to the story as well, but not much.

The book is short so I don't see the need for a long review. I hear that Evanovich's "Numbers" books are better and some of her fans weren't thrilled with this one. I'll give it two stars out of five, but I was considering a lower rating.

Have the Stock Markets Been Depressed Since 2001?

I've heard from more than one person lately that the stock markets have not done well since 11 September 2001, that they're afraid of investing in stocks because of the risk of another terrorist attack on the United States, and so on. I certainly wouldn't want to advise anyone to invest in an instrument that they're not comfortable with. However, when I hear such blanket assertions made about the stock market or baseball statistics, I wonder what the numbers really say, and decide to look it up.

I'm going with the most-recognized US market index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

10 September 2001 Close: 9605.85
18 September 2007 Close: 13739.39
Cumulative Annual Growth Rate Over this Period: 6.12%

I used the handy Excel XIRR function to compute this value. I don't think I've been able to compute this kind of math on my own since I was 18.

But what do the numbers show? What should the reader think of a 6.12% annual growth rate? Well, it is lower that the supposed long-term historic average. But on the other hand, I don't think it should be considered dismal. It seems within the expected historic range for a 6-year period, though I am not checking it against 6-year rolling returns. Maybe when my kids are a little older, I can give them assignments like this.

If you want to guarantee a better return than 6%, well, let me know how that can be done.

Cheerleading Pic

On Losing Weight

For better or worse, my weight has been fairly stable. If I make a moderate effort to watch what I eat, I don't easily gain weight. The down side of this is that, like many of us, it wouldn't hurt me to lose 5 kg or 10 lbs (OK, or more...). Unfortunately, losing weight isn't easy for me and I like food too much to make it happen.

I say this because, when seeing relatives like my parents or some siblings that I don't see daily or even weekly, I'll be told that I look like I'm losing weight. Or maybe I'll be asked if I lost some weight. They could have some "large" impressions of me, and seeing me brings them back down to size; I don't know.

Anyway, I had thought that this was just some kind of honest question. However, it's happened so much without corresponding weight loss that I am starting to wonder about it. Is it just some kind of polite greeting? Am I just being told, "You're not as fat as I thought you'd be"? Am I being rude (in my family at least) if I don't ask people if they'd lost weight in return?

Anton's Chekhov's Short Stories

I enjoyed my collection of Chekhov's short stories. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as he was, after all, my favourite Star Trek character. To me, they seemed to have some of the feel of "real life" to them, which stands in contrast to other 19^th century works I've read. Chekhov isn't trying to answer questions about life. If anything, he's trying to raise them.

This lead to an interesting discussion with a Dickens fan, who seemed to like the structure of a Dickens novel, with its good guys and bad guys, beginning, middle, and end, morality, etc. Chekhov isn't like that at all. And, according to my friend, his style of writing was quite an innovation.

From my brief readings on the topic, there are two types of Chekhov stories: those in which nothing really happens in the end and those on which something does. One story that I liked was The Beggar, which can be read here. I won't say which of those two types The Beggar is. Actually, it isn't clear to me.

I may be forgetting someone, but at this point, I'll say that I think I liked Chekhov's stories better than anything I remember which was written in the 1800s. I recommend his works fairly highly, but I can see how some folks might not enjoy it as much as I did.

OK, Here's a (Sort of) Football Picture, too

First Day of School 2007, and New Backpacks

The soon-to-be new preschoolers also need backpacks:


Turtle Boy!

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Housekeeping is a novel by Marilynne Robinson, the author of Gilead. If I understood the hype around Gilead correctly, fans of Housekeeping waited a quarter of a century for Robinson to come out with her second novel. After reading Housekeeping, I can see why her fans were eager for more.

Housekeeping is set in and around a fictional town and lake named Fishbone in Idaho. However, as a reader who ain't never been there (they tell me it's nice) with regards to Idaho, a little bit of research shows that Lake Fishbone seems to bear similarities to the real Lake Pend Oreille, meaning that the town is likely Sandpoint. (Sure enough, that's where Robinson grew up.)

The book tells the story of Ruthie and her sister Lucille, through the eyes of Ruthie. When the girls are orphaned, they move in with their grandmother. Then, after she dies, they eventually have their aunt Sylvia as a guardian. Their relationship with Sylvie forms the main plot of the book. Sylvie had lived as a "drifter" after moving away from home, and it remains to be seen whether or not Sylvie's "housekeeping" will be stable enough to meet the needs of the girls, and the expectations of the community.

And that's just it. Sylvie can be in tune with the beauty of nature, but what good is that? The book is beautifully written, and full of phrases and interesting ways of putting things that make you think. (For example, "his mortal and professional careers ended...") Themes include water, resurrection, life, loss, and memory. Like the lake, at times it can be deep, but that's what the pause and rewind buttons are for.

One other theme that I saw in the book was the whole idea of civilization, or at least society. Who is civilized? Does it have anything to do with keeping a house? Who isn't? What attitudes does civilization view as a threat, and how does it react to such perceived threats?

I really enjoyed this book. It may compete with Mercy Among The Children as my favourite fiction of the year. It's not light reading, so stay away if you prefer fluff. But I think it's worth the effort. Four and a half stars (out of five).

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The Inheritance of Loss is more difficult than most books to sum up in a brief review. Set in the 1980s, at first, the main character seems to be Sai. She's an Indian teen who becomes an orphan when her parents, among the first astronauts in the Indian space program, are run over by a bus in Moscow. (That seems a little contrived to me.) Sai is forced to move in with her grandfather, a retired judge living in the Himalayan foothills near Darjeeling. The judge becomes a main character, as does his poor cook, and also the cook's son Biju, who's an illegal immigrant in New York. Minor characters are also studied in greater detail than in many books.

Sai's love interest is is Gyan, an ethnic Gorkha (Nepali) who becomes involved with the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front (which, I assume most non-Indian, non-Nepali readers will have never heard of).

The book could be described as beautiful, with lots of slices of the reality of life in the post-Colonial era. The experiences of Indians are looked upon (or at least Desai's views of them). For example, while there are exceptions, Biju is assumed to be the common-man Indian emigrant. Without a green card, he has a tough time of it in New York, leaving the reader to wonder whether or not America is all that it's cracked up to be. Where is ones home after all?

If the book has a flaw, in my opinion, it's the time spent with the GNLF. I suppose a novel needs to have some extra conflict introduced. But to me, the slices of life were so vivid and compelling that this wrinkle hardly seemed to be needed.

Despite winning the Man Booker prize, it seems to have more than the normal share of negative reviews over at Amazon.com. As of this writing, it's rated at three stars out of five. I'll do better than that and give it three and one half stars. However, Desai can do better.

UK Climate Change Protesters at Nuclear Plant

I don't really know much about this story beyond the headline, but here's an article. Just the headline make me wonder if the protesters are for or against climate change.

There is a lot of negativity surrounding nuclear power, but if you wanted to increase CO₂ emissions, wouldn't one way be to ban nuclear?

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

This book should be subtitled The Ramblings of a Grumpy Old Man Who Is Unhappy With the State of the World. It was published in 2005 when Vonnegut was 82. At least "Kurt's up in heaven now", or at least he wants me to mention this. (Read the book to know what I mean.)

Actually, for an atheist and humanist, he talks about God and Jesus a lot. One interesting point was that he'd rather see Christians pushing for wider display of the Beatitudes (see below), rather than the 10 Commandments. I can go for that.

The book is US-Centric and rather short. I'm not sure I'd want to pay the full price for it, but if you can pick up a copy from the library, it isn't a bad introduction to Vonnegut's late-life views. Slaughterhouse Five was better. So was Back To School. Two and a half stars out of five.

And, here are the Beatitudes. Vonnegut suggested that it would be nice to see the one concerning the Peacemakers in the office of George W. Bush.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God
Matthew 5:3-9 [NIV]

The Rocket Runner?

Here are a few photos from yesterday's rocket launch. From reading The Kite Runner a while ago, I had the feeling that if I caught a (parachuting) rocket in the air, I should get to keep it. I did catch one, but gave it back to the 10-year old when he asked for it. (I'm looking forward to reading A Thousand Splended Suns).



We also brought along my old little one:


No parachte and small size makes it go high and fast, but it's difficult to see and find. It didn't land very far from the launch pad.