23 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #106: UC #105 Follow-Up

Rarely does one of my posted postulations receive confirmation so quickly as has Uncommon Commentary #105, which arrived at the Doman Domain on Sunday; when I got home from church on that same day, I found a Connecticut Post front-page story titled "Global Warming Threat on the Rise."  Given that 1) world temperatures have remained flat for more than a decade; 2) electronic-mails "hacked" from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit have shown leading proponents of the anthropogenic-global-warming theory to be self-serving, ruthless liars; 3) the UN's 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is being revealed to contain so many errors that it would earn a failing grade in a high-school science class; and 4) as if to add an exclamation mark to the refutation of the "scientific" assertions, many parts of our country have seen record amounts of snowfall in the past few weeks, I would have expected the media to at least wait for a heat wave before running another article like that.

21 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #105

The USAF's Project Blue Book offered perfectly rational explanations for everything that people thought that they had witnessed at Roswell in the 1940's.  So far as I'm concerned, the case is closed, but the fact that this revelation has had no noticeable effect on what can be called Roswell's alien industry leads me to suspect that, Weathergate notwithstanding, global-warming mania is a monster that will not die.

19 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #104: The Heads of Hollywood Have Heads of Holly Wood (or Some Kind of Wood, Anyway)

I can think of a much better target for populist furor than bankers who receive bonuses: the Hollywood crowd.  Some film actors and actresses actually get paid upwards of $25 million for a single motion picture; even the wealthiest of bankers (who, unlike the former, have real jobs, and play an important rĂ´le in the functioning of our economy) are paupers by that standard.  The Tinseltown elite are, moreover, objectionable in additional ways.  Their behavior (both personal and on-screen) scandalizes people whose morals have a basis in religion, and not just in this country; offense at our popular culture, as epitomized in Hollywood films, is believed to be one of the factors that motivate Islamic terrorism against the USA.  They embrace every crackpot left-wing cause that comes along, and they further the same in the most obnoxious ways possible. (They don't even practice what they and their fellow leftists preach, for they seek to get themselves exempted from the tax-the-rich policies that they say they favor.)
Shall we, then, see the "Beautiful People" become the new object of the obloquy that is currently directed at capitalists?  Not likely, for that obloquy has been incited by the leftist-dominated media and Obama administration, which will never do anything to antagonize their fellow travellers.  Anyway, people in our fallen world probably need celebrities at whom they can gawk, and about whose real or purported exploits they can read in People magazine or The National Enquirer.  When I rule the world, by contrast, things will be quite different; Hollywood will be razed, and symbolically sown with salt. (This doesn't mean that I think that our cinematic industry has never served a valid purpose; I enjoy most films made in the days when they generally upheld Christian values, but that era ended in the mid-1960's, at the same time when so many other good things died out.)

16 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #103: Obombast Needs a "Dialogue" Coach

Obama's policy of disregarding Iran's dissidents for the sake of "engaging" Ahmadinejad's regime is reminiscent of the elder Bush's policy toward Gorbachev's USSR.  The effect of perestroika and of glasnost (which, incidentally, means not "openness" but "publicity") may have been to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union (which was ultimately inescapable so long as the state remained burdened by its leftist economic system), but the purpose had been to save it; Bush, though aware of the CIA's assessment that the USSR was heading for collapse, supported the reforms and the country in which they were taking place, as if Soviet "communism with a human face" were preferable to no Soviet communism.
It's questionable whether Iran's government will collapse because of popular dissatisfaction, but if we are to "dialogue" with anyone in that nation, it ought to be not with the ruling despots but with those who are striving to undo the effects of the 1979 revolution, and who, as potential post-Ahmadinejad leaders, want to know whether our talk of "human rights" means anything.

14 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #102

Can you identify the author of this quote?
There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.  And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
It was said by Abraham Lincoln.  This doesn't mean that you have to agree with it, as I, being a Christian, certainly don't, but it ought to interest those who have assumed that the Great Emancipator would have approved of the enthronement—I mean, election—of Obama.

13 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #101

It's hypocritical to speak well of a vile person, e.g., corrupt politician John Murtha, simply because he's now dead.  The tragedy of someone like Murtha is not the fact that he died—death, after all, happens to everyone—but, rather, the fact that he lived the way he did.

12 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #100!

The bastardizing of 25 December into a generic "Holiday" is lamentably familiar to us, but we probably don't think much about the fact that a like fate seems to have befallen 14 February.  St. Valentine's Day (the feast day of, as I've heard, a man whom the pagans executed for performing weddings at a time when Roman soldiers were not permitted to marry) has degenerated into simply "Valentine's Day" (a secular celebration of love, and often also of what's euphemistically called lovemaking.)

09 February 2010

Bowls, Polls, Field Goals (&c.) Addendum

Had I known about the ending of the NFC Championship, I would have had something to add to Bowls, Polls, Field Goals (&c).  The NFL's provision for overtime is for "sudden death," viz., whoever scores first wins the game, and if no one scores, the game ends in a tie anyway (which makes the system rather pointless), save in the playoffs.  Sin City scored on the opening possession of overtime, thus effectively winning the game (and going on to win the Hyperbowle) because of a coin toss.  Sudden death is a fit fate for whoever came up with this rule.

03 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #99: Bowls, Polls, Field Goals (&c.), Part II

Do you recall how, at the beginning of Bowls, Polls, Field Goals, (&c.), I wrote that the reasons why I no longer watch the game that we in the Usa call "football" were "not necessarily limited to" what followed?  Here are more of them.
  1. Showboating is pervasive in "football," to the irritation of nearly everyone.  This unsportsmanlike conduct ought to be penalized accordingly, yet neither the NCAA nor the NFL makes any discernible effort at such enforcement.
  2. In the second half of NFL matchups, the clock stops with two minutes remaining to play and upon the attainment of a first down thereafter.  The reason is to facilitate come-from-behind efforts, and thus make the endings of games more dramatic than they would be minus this artificiality.  It reminds me of Democrats' approach to economic matters.
  3. Teams ought not to be allowed to play in domed stadiums, which magnify sound, thus giving the home team an unfair advantage.  This is true even when crowd noise is not being used intentionally as a weapon versus the visitor, as it often is, in violation of the spirit of the game.
  4. Only quarterbacks, running backs, and receivers ever win the Heisman Trophy anymore, and even these recipients are so often undeserving that they could be mistaken for Nobel Peace Prize laureates.  The hyperbole associated with it is well-known.  Why aren't people similarly obsessed with the Maxwell Award, which is also given to the player who's deemed best?
  5. The gridiron these days seems to have no more imagination than the Government does.  The uniforms of NFL teams all seem to have some combination of blue and silver; thanks in no small part to the influence of totalitarianism lite (see the list of Domanisms) or political correctness, people think that just about the only nicknames now available for a team are ones that invoke either animals or natural phenomena such as storms.
  6. The Baltimore Ravens are really the Cleveland Browns under an assumed name.  They ought to move back to Cleveland to replace the impostors, who ought to move to Indianapolis to replace the Colts, who ought to move back to Baltimore.  Since New York also has the Giants, who long antedate the Jets, the latter ought to go to Los Angeles or to some other city that doesn't have a franchise.
  7. The NFL tries to enforce what it calls parity, by giving the best teams the strongest schedules and the worst teams the weakest ones.  This has the desired but undesirable effect of punishing success and rewarding lack of the same—think of it as Affirmative Action for losing teams—and thus making many season win-loss records misleading, and it often does so cumulatively, since schedule strength is based on the previous year's results.  In 1999 the Titans went 13-3 before the postseason, but won only three games against opponents that had a winning record: two versus the 14-2 Jaguars and one versus the 13-3 Rams, neither of whom had beaten any winning teams.
  8. It's not just how many games that you lose in "college football," but when you lose them that's important.  1965 saw Michigan State, Arkansas, and Nebraska all go 10-1; which team finished #1 in the final AP poll?  9-1-1 Alabama.  Why?  Michigan State, Arkansas, and Nebraska each lost their bowl, whereas Alabama, the highest-ranked non-undefeated team at the conclusion of the regular season, won theirs, and there's an unwritten rule that you can't be voted champion if you end the season with a loss, even if you've had a better year overall than has anyone else.  The 1993 season saw a new wrinkle: Florida State and Notre Dame each finished with one loss, but, because Notre Dame's defeat came in the final contest before bowls, Florida State was chosen as "national champion," despite losing to Notre Dame.
  9. The NFL has twice as many teams as it did 40 years ago.  It ought to undo its 1970 merger with the AFL, and allocate to that league the 10 old-AFL teams as well as the five expansion franchises that we’ve seen since then; the NFL would thus have the Giants, Browns, Packers, Bears, '49ers, Steelers, Saints, Vikings, Colts, Falcons, Rams, Lions, Cowboys, Redskins, Eagles, and Cardinals, and the AFL would have everyone else.  The league champions would still play another in the Hyperbowle (see the list of Domanisms), just as they did after the 1966-1969 seasons, and as the winners of the American and National League pennants meet in the World Series.
  10. The "prevent defense" is generally used in a situation where your team leads by more than a touchdown late in the game.  It has its basis in the assumption that you can afford to allow your opponent to score so long as it's not a quick score, which would give them time to score again; since the game clock stops when a pass falls incomplete, but not when a completion is made, you should therefore allow them to complete all except deep passes, so that, if they score, they'll have used too much precious time in order to do so.  This might be logical if not for the possibility that the team that has just narrowed your lead will execute a successful onside kick, which will give them immediate possession of the ball and good field position.  I've seen no statistics on the subject, but the chance of this happening is probably equal to or greater than that of the team's scoring a touchdown in just a few plays.  It's bad enough to see your team give up a score for no reason when they have a substantial lead, but some coaches use this defense even when the opponent is within a touchdown or less of victory.  In a game that I watched in 1993 or '4, Green Bay, ahead 13-12 with under two minutes to play, began playing the prevent defense; Minnesota went right down the field, and kicked a winning field goal. (I wonder whether the New England Idiots won in the same way versus the St. Louis Lambs in the Hyperbowle, which game I didn't see.)  At least the name "prevent defense" seems apt, since prevent (successful) defense is what it often does.

01 February 2010

Uncommon Commentary #98

Obama said recently that he would rather be "a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."  This quote is incomplete, since he gave no opinion on being the worst president to serve any number of terms.