Category: Current Affairs

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Lucky, Lucky Winner

One of the best things about the Internets of late is that one can win unlimited riches through lotteries around the world without even entering. In just the last couple of days I’ve gotten emails informing me that:

  • “…You have been selected for a cash prize of £1,350,000 (One million, three hundred and fifty thousand, pounds sterling)held on the 26th of September 2007 in London Uk.” (Oddly, this one’s from the Irish lottery.)
  • “…You have been selected for a cash Price of 1,000,000.00 (One Million Pounds Sterling) in cash … from International programme held on the 27th of SEPTEMBER 2007 in the United Kindom. “
  • “…You have been selected for a cash prize of £1,000,000.00 (British Pounds) held on the 27th of September 2007 in London Uk.”
  • “…You have won our International Charity Awards of US $1,000,000.00 dollars during the past 2007 Global Internet Summit titled “Discovering Greatness”, held in the London, United Kingdom.”
  • “…Your mail account have been picked as a winner of a lump sum pay out of Eight hundred and ninty-one thousand,nine hundred and thirty-four Great Britain pounds£891,934.00 pounds sterlings) in cash.”
  • —“The Board of Directors of NETHERLAND LOTTERY PROMOTIONS announces to you as 1 of our 10th lucky winners of this month draw held on 27th of September 2007. … Your email address emerged alongside with 9 other as the first category winner.Consequently you have therefore been approved for a total pay out of 2,000, 000.00 (Two million Euro) only.”

So let’s see: Thanks to my having an email address — thanks, Yahoo! Mail — I’m 4,241,934 pounds, $1 million and 2 million euros richer today than I was yesterday (the only real headache in all this new wealth is figuring out how much it comes to in real money — the low, low U.S. dollar. Let’s see: According the the calculator at xe.com, those pounds are worth US$8,678,971.27. The euros are worth US$2,852,599.07. And the dollars are worth, well, less than when I started writing this. So my haul for today is $12,531,570.34. I’ll give those 34 cents to some panhandler. I’ll pay off my credit cards — finally! — with the rest.

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Wednesday Notebook

Operation Narrow Stall: My friend Pete alerts me to a groundbreaking piece of investigative journalism from the Washington Post: One of the paper’s bloggers went all the way to Minnesota to cover Senator Larry Craig’s heroic withdrawal of his guilty plea for disorderly conduct (next from Senator Craig: a patent filing for a “a method and device for getting toothpaste back in the tube”). While he was in Minnesota, said blogger visited the very restroom where Senator Craig made/didn’t make sundry sordid advances to an undercover cop earlier this year. The blogger’s conclusion: The stalls in the restroom are very narrow, so maybe Senator Craig’s assertions about his intentions being mistaken aren’t as ridiculous as they sound. The blogger even discovered that there were scraps of toilet paper on the restroom floor — just as Craig has insisted there were the night of his arrest. Wow. This is starting to sound like something Oliver Stone could run with. As Pete says, “If our nation’s media had directed this level of scrutiny to the bush administration’s pre-war machinations, how different the world might be. …”

Grisly Find: By way of my brother John, this AP item in the Times, datelined Maiden, N.C.: “Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside.” It’s a classic of the “bondage file” genre as we called it at the San Francisco Examiner (“The Monarch of the Dailies,” R.I.P.). The key graphs:

“The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found.

“The mother, Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery ‘for religious reasons’ she doesn’t know much about.

” ‘The rest of the family was very much against it,’ Steele said.

“Steele said her son, John Wood, plans to drive to Maiden, about 35 miles northwest of Charlotte, to reclaim his amputated leg, police said. ”

… Or Two Balls: I half-heard something on the radio during the Giants broadcast Tuesday night that I found a little hard to believe I was really hearing. An ad from a local group promoting testicular cancer awareness. And the group’s name: the Have A Ball Foundation.

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Recent Fascinating Find

Capitol

In the process of researching some recent legislative handiwork in the U.S. Senate — the absurd resolution condemning MoveOn.org for picking on poor little General Petraeus — I came across something much more interesting in the Defense Department appropriations bill now before Congress: an amendment, the Wartime Treatment Study Act, that would establish a commission to investigate and report on how alien European-Americans (the legislation’s term) were treated during World War II. The bill would also mandate a study into the measures the United States took to bar European Jews trying to escape the Nazis.

It’s a fascinating question. Most Americans now know that more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese-born residents were interned during the war. For many reasons — mostly the sweeping nature of the action that targeted a non-European ethnic group and the scale of the internment regime — the Japanese-American example stands out and is really without parallel in our history. But as this bill states, most of us aren’t aware of the actions the U.S. government took against German-Americans, Italian-Americans and others under Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the same measure that called for action against the Japanese-Americans. Among other things, thousands were interned, many were involuntarily repatriated to Axis nations, and hundreds of thousands were identified as enemy aliens and required to carry special IDs.

Something interesting about this bill: This is the fourth or fifth Congress in which the original sponsor, Sen. Russell Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, has tried to get it passed. Among his cosponsors is a Democratic arch-liberal, Kennedy, and a Republican conservative, Grassley (also: the self-interested Nutmeg Stater, Lieberman). The bill has an interested sponsor and cosponsors in the House. But for some reason, it’s not moving. Feingold complained in 2004 that an unknown Republican was exercising a “secret hold” to keep the bill from coming to a vote. This year, he hitched it to the ill-fated Senate immigration legislation; even though Feinberg’s section was approved, the bill as a whole was killed. Now, he’s gotten it attached to the military appropriations bill. Nobody’s watching it or writing about it, so far as I can tell, so Feingold probably isn’t holding his breath for this one.

You wonder, though, what in the world would possess anyone to oppose such a measure. It costs very little. Nobody’s talking about monetary reparations. The bill merely aims to shed light on what we euphemistically term a difficult chapter in our history; God knows that, even as Ken Burns is reminding us how heroically the nation behaved during the war was that we might learn a thing or two from the less heroic moments. And perhaps we’d succeed in giving some abused survivors of the era a measure of peace, if not justice.

(In the Senate, the bill is S. 621; the identical House bill is H.R. 1185.)

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1710

Floyd Landis lost the 2006 Tour de France on stage 16 with a spectacular and humiliating collapse on the final climb in a long alpine stage. He came back the next day and did what no one imagined possible, riding a solo attack across the Alps that shocked those who left him for dead the day before. He won the Tour in the race’s final time trial and got his victory lap on the Champs Elysees. And then… . Well, you know all that. A urine sample taken after the thrilling stage win showed an unusually high level of testosterone. Something like a trial was held, and the verdict is in: 14 months after his apparent triumph, Landis’s tests have been ruled reliable and he appears to have lost the ’06 Tour once and for all. Unless he files and wins and appeal or contemplates a comeback in his late mid-30s, his career as a professional cyclist is over, too.

It’s a bad business. I’m not well versed in the case evidence. But I don’t want to believe Landis doped, and circumstantially the case against him — the very idea that he would cheat at that juncture of the race — never made sense to me and still doesn’t. The system in place to prosecute Landis and others is flawed simply by its presumption of guilt; essentially, it presents riders with test results and challenges them to prove they’re not right. So, in the absence of a “Shoeless Joe” moment — me: “Say it ain’t so, Floyd”; him: “I’m afraid it is, kid” — I think I’ll always see Landis the way he was on that one amazing day, bursting from the pack and overtaking and dropping one rider after another until, finally, he rode alone over the last mountain. He crossed the line at 5:10 p.m., or 1710 in the 24-hour time scheme the French use.

There’s a little movement afoot, promoted mostly by Trust But Verify, I guess — for fans and supporters to hoist their libation of choice in Floyd’s honor at 5:10 p.m. today, wherever you happen to be. I’ll be doing that.

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The Pasadena Peloton

OK, here’s one of the many things I didn’t know about Los Angeles and its cycling culture. Every Tuesday and Thursday, there’s an informal event at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl that’s known as the Peloton. Depending on which print source you believe, as many as 100 (Los Angeles CityBeat’s number) or 150 riders (the figure in the L.A. Times) turn out every Tuesday and Thursday during Daylight Saving Time to blast around a three-mile circuit outside the stadium.

It might be fun to do. Once. Or twice. Or at least until the first crash.

Both CityBeat (first) and the Times (second) thought the Peloton a fit subject for a major feature this week. That’s because the city of Pasadena, having gotten an earful from some residents and businesses scared or just put off by the horde of high-speed cyclists, is talking about shutting down the ride. CityBeat’s take, which I’ll give points for sounding like it’s written by someone who’s ridden in the group, is to dismiss the idea. Sure, the ride is dangerous, but so is every peloton. By its nature, though, it’s unpoliceable. The Times notes the conflicts and safety issues among cyclists, drivers, pedestrians and others, but the picture you get is that everyone’s trying to work things out. For instance, car traffic might be limited in the area during the three or so hours a week the Peloton is on the street; and foot traffic might be required to move counterclockwise against the flow of the ride to try to ensure that walkers and runners are at least facing the bikes as they approach.

DST ends this year on the first Sunday in November. It starts again the second Sunday in March. That’s how long folks have to come up with some sort of solution.

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And the (2006) Tour Winner Is …

Only six more days at the most and we’ll know who won the 2006 Tour de France. That’s because the doping cops’ largely inscrutable process of deciding whether Floyd Landis is a doper or not has finally come to an end — there are many good blog takes on this, including ones at Rant Your Head Off and Trust But Verify — and the verdict will be announced by next Sunday. So, Landis will either pull off a win even more stunning than his famous escape in the final week of the ’06 Tour or, more likely, he’ll be found guilty of cheating and some guy named Oscar will belatedly get the now faded and much besmirched yellow jersey.

(And why do I say it’s more likely he’ll be found guilty of cheating? Just this: As shown time and time again, the anti-doping “system” in cycling is a “system” the same way a neck-tie party was a system in the Old West: It has shown itself to have no concern for due process. Landis is a cause celebre here in the States, but arguably much worse has happened to other riders at the hands of doping and cycling and team officials who feel compelled to act before all the evidence is in. The world will little note nor long remember Michael Rasmussen, but any time you yank the leader of the nearly certain winner of the Tour off the road and tell him to pack his bags, you’ve administered a cure that’s far worse than the disease.)

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My Rights, Ably Defended

It’s sort of like Mao said: Free speech grows out of the barrel of a gun. The latest reminder comes from General David Petraeus (a.k.a., the Lafayette of Iraq), who responded to a negative ad from MoveOn.org this way:

“I’m not so sure the infamous MoveOn ad was smartly done, but I found Petraeus’s reaction today interesting: “Needless to say, to state the obvious, I disagree with the message of those who are exercising the First Amendment right that generations of soldiers have sought to preserve for Americans.”

A friend puts it better than me: “I grow so weary of that refrain, heard from the military any time any civilian even hints at criticizing these sainted men and women. If this stunningly stupid war had ANYTHING to do with preserving my right to free speech, I’d be a little more forgiving of the rhetorical ploy. But please, General, don’t insult me and don’t embarrass yourself.”

And the same also sends this, from Slate — “Lost Voices“:

“On Monday, while Gen. David Petraeus prepared to testify before two House committees about the successes of the surge, seven of his soldiers died when their transport vehicle overturned in a highway accident west of Baghdad.

“Two of those soldiers, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were part of another group of seven—the seven noncommissioned officers of the 82nd Airborne Division who wrote a brave, well-reasoned op-ed in the Aug. 19 New York Times, calling the prospect of victory ‘far-fetched’ and appraisals of progress ‘surreal.’ ”

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Guest Observation: Madeleine L’Engle

“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

— Madeleine L’Engle, 1918-2007 (from her New York Times obit today)

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Sales Call

By way of MK: Mark Fiore’s “My Pet Legacy.”

Stop holding your breath: Make sure you talk to your kids and grandkids about Iraq, because someday, they’ll have to talk to their kids and grandkids about it; it would be great if they could understand how we allowed this whole thing to get started. So now we’re waiting for The Report on how things are going Over There. It’s another exercise in our national game of “who are you going to believe — me or your own eyes?” We’re not having a national debate or even a discussion about this anymore. We’re the captive audience for a national sales pitch. The war’s proponents are marketing the war to the rest of us, the reluctant buyers, with the underlying argument that they’re selling the only product we can possibly buy and that, even if it looks, smells, and tastes awful and the price is outrageous, we’d better sign up for a lifetime supply if we know what’s good for us. And besides, interest-only financing is available. So sure, let’s go ahead and do it; it’s an investment in the future, we hope, and maybe we can refinance next year.

Low, low easy payments: Like most buy-now, pay-later schemes, this one’s the gift that keeps on giving. Somehow, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get ahead of the payments and the upkeep. How long can this go on? Well, you might ask Israel. Mighty on the battlefield. Stalwart for democracy. Prosperous and inventive economically. And utterly unable to free itself from the deserts of its victory in the Six-Day War (if it took six days, why is it still going on?). That has all worked out beautifully for everyone, including we, the people who have dumped more than $100 billion into the Israeli project in the last 40 years. The Palestinians have rubble aplenty to go with a feeble, corrupt and blinkered leadership, and the Israelis have a militarized “democracy” that can only limit the unrest on its fringes by isolating the Palestinians with walls and separate highways. It’s a beautiful picture. Consider us sold.

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Tuesday Notebook

Vuelta a España: The race went into the mountains today (which mountains? Some Spanish mountains). The winner was a Russian named Efimkin, of whom, due to my thin knowledge of the pro ranks, I can tell you nothing except that he was in a long breakaway today and managed to stay away from a hard chase even when the final climb hit 14 percent. Yesterday’s stage went to Paolo Bettini, Italian of Quickstep, reigning world road race champ and member of my own Berkeley Bombers fantasy Vuelta squad. Of which, read on.

Fantasy Vuelta: Thanks to its second consecutive one-two finish, the Berkeley Bombers advanced from 58th to 35th place. Sunday, Oscar Freire won a finishing sprint with Bettini second. Monday, Bettini edged Freire. Of course, those are just about the only guys on my team of nine who have scored. And now that the mountain stages have begun, the sprinters are toast (for awhile) and the Bombers face a steady slide toward the middle of the 600-strong pack.

Today’s top doping news: Handwringing in Britain, by way of The Telegraph, over the case of sprinter Christine Ohuruogu. She was recently banned from the UK’s Olympic squad for missing random drug tests. But last week she went to the world track championships and won a gold in the 400-meter dash. Noting that Ohuruogu has never failed a doping test, the head of the nation’s track and field federation is making noises about finding a way to get her reinstated. The Telegraph argues, in its headline, that “athletics faces ruin if it keeps bending its rules.” Also today: T-Mobile fires another rider over a positive drug test.

Life in limbo: Floyd Landis raced this weekend, his new hip and ongoing problems with the sports doping cops notwithstanding. The event: a marathon mountain bike race, the Shenandoah Mountain 100. He came in third and according to the accounts you come across online left a pretty positive impression on fans and fellow racers alike.

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