Whipped Cream Difficulties

Instead of a musical interlude, or random snark, we’ve decided this week to bring you something we hope you’ll really like: an interview with Gregg Easterbrook about The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America from Reason magazine. Why? Well, we self-identify as libertarians, we like Reason, and we’d like to give them some more exposure. Also, we think this is a rare opportunity to see and hear the man himself, just in case you were wondering what TMQ looks and sounds like.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

TMQ’s “Authentic Games” metric predicts a Denver – Seattle Super Bowl. 322 words down. (We like the idea of a Denver – Seattle Super Bowl. It renders all of the complaints about this year’s game possibly being played in the cold irrelevant. And Denver – Seattle probably won’t attract the audience that, say, one or more New York teams would.)

It’s December, gentlemen. The gods will not save the Cowboys.

Sweet: Seattle. Sour: Kansas City (chicken-(salad) kicking). Mixed: Carolina – Tampa Bay, Jacksonville – Cleveland. (We are sorry the Browns lost, but, on the other hand, the Texans now have a one game lead in the race to the bottom.)

More chicken-(salad) kicking: Pittsburgh.

There is a three-word solution to Black Friday becoming Black Thursday: Just say no. Don’t go to corporate retailers on Thanksgiving. Be with friends and relatives, even if they drive you nuts, and keep your thoughts on gratitude and the meaning of the day. If a couple years pass without crowds rushing the doors of big-corporate stores on Thanksgiving, then retailers will go back to being closed and giving their workers a day off.

We’ve been thinking some about this. First off, we agree somewhat with TMQ that large retail stores shouldn’t be open on Thanksgiving. We don’t shop on Thanksgiving, or on the following Friday for that matter.

But: we were awfully happy to see our local grocery store open for a few hours on Thanksgiving. Does that make us evil? We were awfully happy that we could stop by a gas station/convenience store on Thanksgiving and get a newspaper for our beloved sister. (A THREE DOLLAR newspaper, but that’s another story.) We’re sure many people were happy they could get their Starbucks coffee on Thanksgiving morning. (And we hear from some Starbucks employees that they’re really happy to be working Thanksgiving; they get time and half, plus the tips on Thanksgiving are only split among the employees who work, plus people tend to be really generous with those tips.)

As it happens, for the past few years, we’ve been working in enterprise IT support where operations are 24/7/365. We worked a half-day on Thanksgiving this year, and extra time during the rest of the week to make up the missing four hours. Enterprise IT support tends to be an international operation; should Dell, for example, shut down their enterprise call queue so all of their staff can have Thanksgiving off, and tell callers from the United Kingdom to call back on Friday?

Is it okay to shop on Amazon or eBay on Thanksgiving? Even though you aren’t interacting with a person, there’s still somebody behind the curtain making sure the servers are running and the systems aren’t being hacked. Does anybody spare a thought for the sysadmins who are working or on-call for Thanksgiving?

And some people don’t have family, or are estranged from their family, or have to choose between traveling to see family on Thanksgiving or at Christmas (and may depend on that time-and-a-half so they can afford to travel). Is it wrong if they choose to work?

We don’t have really good answers to these questions. We just think the whole debate is much less one-sided than the “retail stores should be closed on Thanksgiving” advocates believe it is.

“Shootouts would seem normal to Dutch Meyer.” Yes, TMQ still thinks it is news that people won’t pay large sums of money to see bad games, but will pay to see good ones.

TMQ is impressed with a new book by Jacqueline Jones, A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America.

Jones persuasively argues that the wealthy and powerful of previous centuries were obsessed with holding back the poor. Pretending blacks represent a different “race” than whites created an excuse, she contends, for the well-off to mistreat blacks; and also a lever to prevent poor blacks and poor whites from joining in common cause. Whites “fashioned their own identity by contrasting themselves to blacks,” Jones writes, ingraining the concept that skin color is somehow fundamentally different from all the other cosmetic distinctions among persons, then using the biases to prevent blacks from achieving the education and economic power that would disprove racial assumptions.

Well, okay. We can’t comment (TMQ got an advance copy; the book will be released next week). But TMQ has some problems with the book; in particular, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, and facts that can easily be checked turn out to be questionable. So why is TMQ impressed with this book again?

Duke (football) still does not suck. Going for two points was the right call for Michigan; too bad it didn’t work.

Crumbs, the national chain attempting to be the Starbucks of cupcakes, peaked at $13 a share in 2011, and now is down to 92 cents. That’s right — a share of stock in a cupcake corporation costs less than a cupcake.

We’ve never even heard of “Crumbs”, which may explain why their stock is down to 92 cents. (Also, while it is true that “a share of stock in a cupcake corporation costs less than a cupcake”, the additional transaction costs for purchasing single shares will eat you alive. There are some companies we’d take that hit for, but “Crumbs” is not one.)

Hey, remember the northern spotted owl? Remember how the Clinton administration basically killed logging in the Pacific Northwest?

There are three other birds quite similar to the northern spotted, whose numbers continue to decline. The California spotted owl has a stable population. The Mexican spotted owl probably is in decline: about five years ago, a federal judge placed land-use restrictions on areas of Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico to protect the Mexican spotted. The barred owl, the third bird similar to northern spotted, doesn’t need special protection as it is population is expanding, based on natural competition.

And the barred owl is pretty aggressive; there are concerns that the barred owl might push out the spotted owl. So the plan is…” let’s kill the disfavored owls in order to help the politically correct owls!” Really. We don’t think TMQ is making this up.

Underneath this issue is a fallacy in human understanding of nature: the assumption that the environment and its creatures are brittle things whom the slightest disturbance will render extinct. The environment has survived ice ages, comet impacts and climate change far more dramatic than any that artificial greenhouse gas may cause. Inconveniently for Pacific Northwest environmental lobbyists, birds extremely similar to spotted owls are doing just fine on their own. So get rid of the evidence.

“climate change far more dramatic than any that artificial greenhouse gas may cause”. Hmmmmm. Hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm. Hmmmm.

TMQ takes note of the “Spider-Man” closing.

In a move after the heart of Max Bialystock, the producer in “The Producers,” producers of the Spider-man musical claim it lost money though running two and a half years.

Yes, Gregg, the analogy to “The Producers” occurred to us and many other people as well. But there are, as we understand it, pretty good reasons why this claim is true: the up-front costs of getting the show launched were enormous, and most of the time it ran it was just barely bringing in enough to cover the weekly costs of running it (which were also enormous).

(And we’d like to take this opportunity to note that Glen Berger’s book, Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History, is now available in hardcover and Kindle formats. We want to read it, but we’re not sure if we want to purchase the Kindle edition or wait for the paperback edition, which will probably be updated to cover the show’s closing.)

Even more chicken-(salad) kicking: Jets.

TMQ’s on an endangered species roll this week.

If the goal is protecting the environment, logging (sustainable) and mass transit (reduces fossil fuel waste) are fine ideas. If the motivation is I’ve-got-mine-Jack, pretend you are deeply concerned with the Hay’s Spring amphipod.

And if the motivation is “mass transit is an enormous boondoggle that will do little to nothing to reduce traffic”?

Dallas. Denver.

“Adventures in Officiating“: why wasn’t Baltimore awarded a touchdown due to Tomlin’s interference? Good question. (And for those of you who remember TMQ from two weeks ago, Baltimore was playing at home, so the refs probably could have gotten away with it.) How about that spectacularly incompetent Washington officiating?

You will not be surprised to learn the words “Jeff Triplette” are attached to yet another zebra blunder.

Aaron Williams never even touched Tony Gonzalez, and there are too many “automatic first downs” in the NFL anyway.

The Eagles? Let the coaches freeze in the dark. “More Texans Ineptitude”. Oh, sorry, that item is actually “Another Routine New England Win”. St. Louis: punts on 4th and 1, goes for it on 4th and 8 and 4th and 11?

“Wacky Sushi of the Week“: except this isn’t actually “wacky sushi”, but “wacky sushi chefs”.

Apparently it’s not enough that sushi be fine dining, it must be art!

We wouldn’t suggest that all cooking should be art, but we see nothing wrong with some cooking at least attempting to elevate itself to the level of art. Arby’s: no. The French Laundry: yes. This seems like a very know-nothing position for TMQ to take. (Whether cooking actually succeeds at being art is a different debate, one which the margins of this blog are too small to contain.)

(And please allow us to repeat our recommendation of “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”.)

If you were wondering what Rocky the Dog should give for Christmas, you can find out here. Our position is that underarm deodorant made with bits of real bacon is much better than underarm deodorant made with bits of fake bacon.

Buffalo stinks. An actual “exercise science” major responds to TMQ:

“…I am now in my second year of medical school, and can report that my degree prepared me more for my classes in medical school than the classes of some of my friends who majored in neuroscience, molecular neology or microbiology. For my exercise science degree, I was required to take human anatomy, human physiology, biology, molecular biology, tissue biology, physics, general chemistry and organic chemistry before going on to courses such as exercise physiology, orthopedic impairments and biomechanics…”

Readers also respond to TMQ on psychics. This year’s “TMQ Christmas List” includes a model of JFK’s death car and an unfortunate pillow. Disclaimer of the week: dogs should not surf. (Also, TMQ has a new Acura with a stick. Previously.)

Is there a pill the football gods can take to stop the incessant chortling? Bench Bobby Three Sticks for his (and Washington’s) own good. The 500 Club. The 600 Club. Wisconsin-Whitewater 33, Franklin of Indiana 3.

Single worst (college) play of the season so far: you guessed it, the final play of the Alabama – Auburn game.

Next week is TMQ’s annual bye week. We are thinking that we will make an exception to our policy of not purchasing anything for ourselves between Thanksgiving and Christmas except bare necessities (food, gasoline, toilet paper, booze) in order to get a copy of The King of Sports and review it between now and the next TMQ. We will keep you updated.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 4th, 2013 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Art, Books, Christmas, Clippings, NFL, Sports, Theatre, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.