Welco-me back

If you were noticing (nobody was), there was a substantial posting gap on this unread blog. Even though no one reads this, I try to maintain a semblance of having readers by continuing to post here. I must be attracting lots of spider hits now, because my hit count keeps climbing even when I'm not posting anything new.

Anyway, had a smallish computer problem and no time to fix it. Meanwhile, after predicting that a Serena-Venus Wimbledon final would be boring (it was) and that a Federer-Roddick final would be mercilessly boring -- it wasn't -- what an amazing effort! Roddick can now sympathize with Andre Agassi; go an entire match in a Grand Slam tournament without losing your serve and lose. Agassi did that with Sampras at the 2001 U.S. Open; I think he won one tiebreaker and lost three [confirmed: 6-7(7), 7-6(2), 7-6(2), 7-6(5) Sampras in the quarters]. And Roddick loses serve ONCE and loses the match? Federer loses serve more than Roddick? It's incomprehensible. Had Roddick done what had been expected, which was lose quickly in straight sets, it wouldn't have been agonizing for fans of the underdog and the big upset like me. I read an article about the match where the author wondered about the psychological damage done to fans during a tense sports event (You Think You're Hurting, Andy R. What About Me?) -- I can emphathize directly with that. Roddick deserved to win, but he didn't. So did Rocco Mediate at the U.S. Open (golf) last year. So did Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the 1995 Wimbledon women's final (Perhaps the greatest game of them all) -- but at least Arantxa got a couple of majors from Steffi elsewhere, still Graf denied here on the grass. The great ones become great by virtue of a winning a couple more points or making one more basket or sinking one more putt than the also-rans. [And I hope Roddick has it in him to get one more major, just like I was glad Greg Norman, despite his ability to come up with creative ways to lose, won two British Opens]. There are many other examples. Upsets are notable for what they represent -- the dominant player or team expected to win gets surprised, and so do sports fans. (Think Misty Hyman in the 200 butterfly final at Sydney in 2000, or the "Gross-busters" 1984 800 meter free relay final in Los Angeles in 1984. I had to toss in a minor sport just to keep things fair.)

Now, I have accumulated a whole bunch of stuff that I'm going to try to disgorge over the next several days. So I'll work quickly. Hopefully in the background I can also complete some of my longer projects. Three for today:

1. Leann, Martina, and Julianne in Shape. Julianne Hough is thoroughly and lip-smackingly eye-catching on grocery store newstands, but the surprise is the inside shot of the three singers: Martina McBride looks spectacular with roughly 15 more years and two kids than the youngsters. The three tummies are wonderful to behold. (Country's Angels: Julianne, Martina, and LeeAnn). Though I must say I saw the pics of LeAnn and Eddie Cibrian apparently trysting in a hotel and a restaurant, about which LeAnn says: "I've been in the tabloids recently too, and it's been really hard for me" [they reported she was romantically linked to her married Northern Lights co-star, Eddie Cibrian]. I think there was a little more to it than that: LeAnn Rimes: Caught in an Affair. Do tell.

2. What to do if you're Mark Sanford: How to be a Sex-Crazed Politician and Survive. Excerpt: "People who argue that politicians who screw around on their wives only prove that they don’t have the requisite character to hold public office don’t know what they’re talking about. Lack of character in one area of your life doesn’t create some kind of slippery slope into another. That’s like arguing a bank robber is likely to commit pedophilia. Point this out, if necessary, by saying that whatever private difficulties you’re facing really have nothing to do with your job, and you’d appreciate being left alone to get on with it."

3. Two conservative know-very-little pundits get it wrong belittling climate change:
Example A: The Empirical President Excerpt: "Leave aside for the moment that following a (mere) 30-year warming trend, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001;" That's the wrong way look at it, Mona; refer to RealClimate (and you might have a gander at the Mooney & Kirshenbaum tome on scientific illiteracy and how it's really screwing up our ability to talk sensibly about this issue) - Warming Interrupted: Much Abo About Natural Variabilty, in which our heroes the authors take to task the multiple misrepresentations of their work on award-winning "scientific" blogs, and a lot of other non-award-winning, not-even-close-to-being scientific blogs.

Example B: Meghan McCain Excerpt: "While few people acknowledge it now, John McCain was also a media darling. He, too, embraced trendy liberal causes like global warming and campaign finance reform." Viewing global warming as a "trendy liberal cause" is an example of a ditzy conservative babe pundit with blinders on who wouldn't understand the difference between how CO₂ and H₂0 behave with regards to climate if you had a year to explain it to her. Sorry, honey Herzog, your opinions are fluff, even if you are an Ashley.

I actually managed to get two more links into this than I expected. It's going to be a fun week, spiders. And there's one more amazingly good piece of news for my area and industry, so I'll get one more lick, er, link in here:

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Energy Facility Gets Final Approval

Yay. Adressing climate change will require multiple slices of pie.