www.romanvenable.net:  Clark's Weblog



Sunday, October 24, 2004
The Professor of Baseball

In a prescient July 2003 New Yorker article titled The Professor Baseball, the genesis of the Red Sox that just beat the Yankees is made clear:

"The Boston Red Sox really want to beat the Yankees. The team’s president and C.E.O., Larry Lucchino, has declared the Yanks an “evil empire,” and the principal owner, John Henry, speaks of being “destined to knock off Goliath.” Last winter, after a season in which the Sox won ninety-three games—but nonetheless fell short of New York for the seventh straight year—Boston installed a new general manager and replaced more than forty per cent of its roster. Perhaps the club’s most significant personnel move was the signing, to a one-year contract, of a big, lumbering fifty-three-year-old right-hander from Kansas (six feet four, and well over two hundred pounds) who spends far more time on the Little League diamond, where he keeps the stats, than at any big-league ballpark. He is Bill James, a former boiler-room attendant who, almost thirty years ago, set out to debunk the conventional wisdom proffered by television and radio commentators—“baseball’s Kilimanjaro of repeated legend and legerdemain,” as he called it—by using statistical evidence."

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Ready tears are a sign of treachery, not of grief. --Publilius Syrus


Friday, September 24, 2004
Iraq News Report Spoof

If you like Monty Python humor, you'll like this spoof of a news report from Iraq:

Puree Soiree: News Report from Iraq

[Via American Daughter]

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How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself. --Publilius Syrus


Thursday, September 23, 2004
Joke: Five People, Four Parachutes

An airplane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board, butonly 4 parachutes.

The first passenger said, "I am Kobe Bryant, the best NBA  basketballplayer;  the Lakers need me, I can't afford to die." So he took thefirst pack and left the plane.

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton said, "I am the wife of the former U.S. President, a Senator from New York, and a potential future president. And I am the smartest woman in American history, so America's people  don't want me to die." She took the second pack and jumped out of the plane.

The third passenger, John Kerry, said, "I'm a big hero who served fourmonths in Vietnam and know whats best for the people of the  UnitedStates of America". I am also going to be my parties nominee forPresident.  So he grabbed the pack next to him and jumped.

The fourth passenger, President George W. Bush, said to the fifthpassenger, a 10-year-old schoolgirl, "I have lived a full life, andserved my country well, I will sacrifice my life and let you have thelast parachute."

The girl said, "That's okay. There's a parachute left for you. America's smartest woman took my schoolbag."

 

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Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults. --Socrates