Idiotic Halloween Belief #1

(Idiotic Halloween Belief #2 is in the post immediately below this one. Both #1 and #2 are sticky and will remain at the top of this blog until November 1)

Every year around Halloween I get a little bit concerned, a little big angry, and a little bit frightened. It turns out that there are bigger concerns on this globe than vampires, or Dracula, or ghosts and goblins. Under our very noses, Halloween has been used and usurped as a tool to propogandize and implement a highly suspicious and dangerous social engineering agenda.

I'm talking, of course, about UNICEF boxes. Those stupid little orange boxes that started being handed out in elementary schools in the late 80s so that kids could walk around and collect money for the United Nations Children's Fund (what kind of psychotic acronym is that, anyways? and yes I know the answer)

Who could possibly be against this? Who could ever be against raising money to support such a needy cause? Who is that hard-assed and cold-hearted on Halloween? Er...I am. (And its an unpopular position too, if you believe liberal blogger Babbler)

Anyways, the secret to the opinion (which Babbler clearly cares little about) is to not just look at what UNICEF's public face is all about, but dig a little deeper.

Funding sterilizations and abortions: Over the past several years, UNICEF has been a strong supporter of legislation mostly in third world countries (but sometimes even in places like New Zealand that provide assurances that young children can receive abortions without parental consent. (from http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=1&art_id=25717:

Let me give you some specifics, starting with abortion. UNICEF denies promoting abortion, but it has endorsed, and even helped to draft, documents that call for the legalization of abortion. The organization also approves of the distribution of abortion-causing "emergency contraception" to refugee women.

UNICEF also helps to fund organizations that promote abortions. One such organization is the Population Council, the group which holds the US patent for the "abortion pill" RU-486. Another is a South African group called LoveLife, which actively encourages teenage girls to have abortions.

On the bright side, in 2007 President Bush's nominee for the head of UNICEF, Ann Veneman, takes over and plans to bring UNICEF's mission back towards, you know, helping poor kids in Africa or some such thing. The Harvard Sentinel has a rundown.

UNICEF has twice been involved in vaccination programs that have been laced with sterilizing chemicals: a polio vaccine in Uganda and Nigeria in 2004, and anti-tetanus shots in the Phillippines in 1995 (covered in, as one might expect, Western [Alberta] Report To paraphrase my own quote from yesterday, "that's too many coincidences to be a coincidence"


Promoting the U.N. Rights of the Child: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is one of the most dangerous and depraved treaties ever brought about. If left unchecked it will do more harm than the Hitler-Stalin Pact or Chamberlain's "peace in our time" ever could muster. And it came about with the full promotion and endorsement of UNICEF (though its too much to ask that it might ever go against its parent company).

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too.

The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life. The four core principles of the Convention are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. Every right spelled out in the Convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The Convention protects children's rights by setting standards in health care; education; and legal, civil and social services.

So that's the preamble. But what are these 54 articles? They were omnious enough that while President Clinton signed the Convention in 1995, the American Senate balked and refused to endorse it.

They include Article 13.1: The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice. Well what if you're a parent who doesn't like the idea of your child watching violent movies, or reading porno mags, or works promoting the violation of your parental authority? The preamble states Convinced that the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community and you'd better hope that some judge finds it more compelling than the specific demands of Article 13! Article 13.2: The exercise of this right may be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; or (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals. And how about this "freedom of expression" to make unkind statements to Grandma, or inappropriate comments on the subway? You certainly don't have the legal power to stop them! Maybe you can turn to Article 14.2: States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child. Again, it doesn't seem to carry a lot of legal weight.

How about Article 15.1: 1. States Parties recognize the rights of the child to freedom of association and to freedom of peaceful assembly. Your child is now free to hang around with goth kids, smokers, troublemakers, and the likes. What can you as a parent do? You can plead "Article 14!" and hope that somebody will listen to you. Remember that by signing this treaty, Canada and other nations have already enshrined it into law.

Article 19.1: States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child. So much for spanking Junior when he does wrong. Hell, can you even call a time-out or send him to his room? Unlikely: Article 37.b: States Parties shall ensure that: No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. ... The second part of Article 37.b talks about arrests, but Article 37 as a whole makes no special exemption for parents -- who seem to be forgotten in this entire piece of legislation!

If he is in his room, don't you think about checking it! Article 16.1: No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation. Even school lockers are off-limits in a strict reading of this law (and you know which way Trudeau's Supreme Court justices would rule).

Article 40.3: States Parties shall seek to promote the establishment of laws, procedures, authorities and institutions specifically applicable to children alleged as, accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law, and, in particular: (a) The establishment of a minimum age below which children shall be presumed not to have the capacity to infringe the penal lawSo all the talk about bringing about changed to the Young Offenders Act to make it possible to charge children under 12 involved in serious crimes is going to face yet another hurdle. That sounds wonderful!

And all the while, you've been funding this with those little orange boxes. For shame! If a kid with a UNICEF pamphlet comes to your door this year, tell him/her to visit Third Edge of the Sword!

For additional resources:

• Home School Legal Defense Association's take
• Phyllis Schlafly's take
• Ted Byfield's take
• Patriot Voices' take
• Rightgrrl's take

Idiotic Halloween Belief #2

(Idiotic Halloween Belief #1 is in the post immediately above this one. Both #1 and #2 are sticky and will remain at the top of this blog until November 1st)

Remember when we were young? The thrill of driving around in the cold from house to house because they were all 6 miles apart from each other er, walking from house to house trick-or-treating? (I guess the rural experience doesn't translate well)

Anyways, you know what the drill was: you walked around with a bag, dressed in a costume, and collected candy. It was a pretty simple gig. If you were lucky, you got full sized commercial chocolate bars (Aero, Smarties, Jersey Milk, etc.) Less lucky, and you got the Halloween sampler-sized commercial chocolate bars. After that the wish list got a little fuzzy. Twizzlers were always acceptable, but knock-off twizzlers were a huge disappointment. My favourite candy, Rosebuds, never really caught on. The homes that gave you themed candy from other holidays was sometimes a little weird (were those new candy canes or really old ones? How long do chocolate Easter eggs keep anyways?), and of course the second biggest letdown was the "homemade treats" people. Who the hell wanted caramel popcorn balls, or nanaimo squares, or pastries? Well, anybody who realized that there was still a bigger letdown: the health obsessed idiots. Plain applies, toothbrushes, sugarless gum, noisemakers, and carrots. Regardless, you brought them all^† home (the sack your brought was never full enough, and your Machiavelli-inspired largest bag hunt ended up being in vain), and then you ate as many of them as you could on the first night (lest siblings find your stash).
^†Well, except for the healthy crap, you usually threw that out thinking you needed to "make room in the bag"

So whatever happened to that? Well, the answer is that the world became a dark and dangerous and ugly place. Every home is now full of sadists who inject cynanide into KitKats, sprinkle heroin on the popcorn balls, and slip razor blades into candy apples. Er, hasn't it? Maybe when Osama bin Laden sets up a bungalow in Mill Woods and decorates it with lots of cotton strewn out to look like spiderwebs we have something to worry about. But for now, this is all much ado about nothing. It turns out that nobody has ever tainted Halloween candy!

Snopes.com is great for debunking Urban Legends, and they do a pretty good number on the poisoned Halloween treats rumour. The only cases ever occuring have been cases of adults who knew the children trying to kill them in a way that would look like a random attack on kids"

By far the most famous case of Halloween candy poisoning was the murder of eight-year-old Timothy Mark O'Bryan at the hands of his father, Ronald Clark O'Bryan, in Houston, Texas. The child died at 10 p.m. on 31 Trick or Treat! October 1974, as a result of eating cyanide-laced Pixie Stix acquired while trick-or-treating.

To make his act appear more like the work of a random madman, O'Bryan also gave poisoned Pixie Stix to his daughter and three other children. By a kind stroke of fate, none of the other children ate the candy.

In other words, all of this "parental inspection of candy" is a giant pointless fear tactic, quoted often in the news media and passed along as some sort of urgent warning to kids. However, massive checks of newspaper records dating back to 1958 have determined that no Halloween candy has ever been poisoned except for poisoning done by persons close to the family. Ironically, this whole thing puts parents on guard for the strangers who's doors they knocked on, and never get them worrying about the tainted O'Henry bars that their secretly homosexual uncle has been handing out.

Now what about foreign objects, such as needles and razor blades? Well, Snopes reports that such occurances are actually true...sorta. In fact, there has been... drum roll please...

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hey, did I say you could stop the drum roll yet?

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...one case.

That's right. One lousy case: In Minnesota in 2000, a creepy 49 year old was discovered to have put needles in Snickers bars and handed them out to children. We've been talking about foreign objects in Halloween candy for close to half a century, and in all that time in all of North America one guy did it one year.

Can we cut back on the annual paranoia please? As a whole, the experience of walking around from house to house trick-or-treating has fallen massively out of favour with parents, mostly because of concerns over bad candy (and slightly less so out of concerns over random child abductions). But with an older child and travelling of groups of at least three children, this should never be a concern. But the numbers of door knockers is reduced year after year, all because of some stupid persistant fears that have no basis in reality.

As thefolklorist.com says:

The truth about the dangers might not have been discovered, were it not for California researchers Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, who studied national crime data going back to 1958. In their 1985 published study, they found only 76 reports of any kind of tampering. Most of them turned out to be mistaken or fraudulent. Out of these 76 reports, only three incidents of children dying were reported to be tainted candy cases. In one case, the father of a Houston boy gave him arsenic laced candy to collect on a large insurance claim. In the second case, a boy stumbled across his uncle’s stash of heroin, ingested some of the drug and died. This boy’s family tried to hide the facts by sprinkling heroin over some of his other candy, but the family soon confessed to their cover-up. And in the third case, a Los Angeles girl had a fatal seizure that was first blamed on tainted candy, but later discovered to be the result of a congenital heart condition.

Parents! Stop leaving your children at these silly cookie cutter mall events! Let them go forth and experience the joys of trick-or-treating! The worst that is likely to happen is that your child might go to the home of some anti-fun freak who has no candy to give them. If you're so protective that you're bothered by this, than you might as well visit this link.

Other links on this topic:

• "The Candy Man", 30 years later
• How often does Halloween candy tampering really happen?
• Halloween candy-tampering mostly just myth
• Tainted Candy or Paranoia? U Students Consider What's Really Scary This Halloween
• History proves candy tampering scare unfounded
• Why bother to save Halloween?

I wonder if it was related to the murder of Vernando Stobbs

Former boxer Trevor Berbick, who twice was Canadian Heavyweight Champion, was murdered in his home country of Jamaica late last week.

Speaking of the case, police now say that there does not seem to be a gang link, and Stobb's connection with "J.C." (who turns out to be "Jacey" Sydney Pinnock, I was looking for initials and missed the phoenetics of the situation) may have been a factor. The bouncer who was also shot is likely to make a recovery. As of yet, still no news about the stabbing(s?) at the "Scream" rave that took place at Polish Hall that night, nor about the stabbing at the Twilight Afterhours club or the claims that there was a shooting at SideBar.

The Totally Unforseen Shocking Unpredictable Surprise Revelation - Calgary gun amnesty edition

Think of this possibly as another example of the rivalry of Alberta's two largest cities: Edmonton's mayor Decore becomes the leader of a provincial political party, Calgary's mayor Klein has to become the leader of a provincial political party. The Calgary Flames make it to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, so the next season the Oilers have to make it to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. Edmonton cops are corrupt, so Calgary cops have to become corrupt too.

Again, what a shock. Who could have seen it? The province undertakes an ill conceived program of gun amnesty (see the Solicitor General's FAQ), accepting weapons with almost no questions asked. These are mostly weapons that are illegal to obtain, making their value higher than would be otherwise. Even if they are legal, the gun registry makes them harder to obtain and therefore higher in value. These valuable firearms are being handed en masse to police officials, where they are mostly going to be destroyed. In other words, if they disappear it won't arouse too many suspicions.

Now we have fallible officers handling valuable property which nobody is going to miss, and then its a shock -- a complete surprise -- to learn at the end of the day some officers have been stealing the guns and keeping them for themselves.

The woman claimed two uniformed officers showed up at her door a week ago -- but didn't leave with the guns, offering instead to buy them.

One officer allegedly returned several days later, while off duty, and paid $200 for the guns.

The weapons apparently never made it into the arsenal of more than 600 registered and unregistered firearms Calgary cops have seized in the amnesty for destruction.

"This is a very serious allegation," said Hornby.

"I can assure you the police service will act quickly and accordingly."

The officer is accused of having been in contact with a gun dealer in Warburg, about 80 km southwest of Edmonton, expressing interest in selling firearms.

Colder than a whatnow?

Seeing how its Halloween, and its -5 Celcius outside, its a good time to:

Give the history behind the phrase "colder than a witch's tit" (one of my father's personal favourites)

Also see the Colder Than a Witch's Tit cartoon collection and a discussion of the British variant: Colder than a witch's teat in a brass brassiere.

Endgame for a series that takes it up the end

With Star Trek: Voyager's final episode on CityTV today, this is a good time to bring up Bozo the Proctologist's review of that same episode:

A genuinely interesting premise who's shoddy execution falls apart at the end - what could be more appropriate for the "Voyager" finale?

Tuvok brushes off his need to get home by quoting the only famous person the planet has ever produced, Ambassador Spock: "The needs of the many stockholders at Paramount outweigh the needs of the few Trek fans who still care."

Potentially a fascinating idea, this episode suffered from being produced as a Voyager episode. Janeway's intermittent concern for her crew's safety just didn't jibe with what we've seen for the past seven years, the relationship between Seven and Chakotay was sabotaged by Beltran's conviction that he's "above" stooping to actually act in a sci fi show, and the plodding pace in the beginning contrasted badly with the rushed, sudden arrival home in the end.

You can also read TV.com's review of the episode, and another highly negative review at FirstTVdrama.com:

This is the same Shielding they used on "Viper".

Remember Janeway's mysterious holodeck novel she was building up a complex mystery to?

You didn't want to know how that ended did you?

Worst of all: CityTV in Toronto (*spit*) gets Deep Space Nine! Yesterday they had Our Man Bashir

Mathematics: All about not blowing glass and water all over the laboratory

Just for fun, here's the scientific paper where Alejandro Jenkins from the California Institute of Technology solved Richard Feynman's "reverse sprinkler" problem. It's an ancient article from scientific standards (2003), but still contains one of the great gems:

All physicists will probably know the frustration of being confronted by an elementary question to which they cannot give a ready answer in spite of all the time dedicated to the study of the subject, often at a much higher level of sophistication than what the problem at hand would seem to require.

It's not just physicists who have to deal with this problem, but its probably only physicists who are aware enough to keep their eyes open for it.

(h/t goes to EverydayScientist)

Bonus EverydayScientist discovery: A reenactment of the Mark Foley instant messages. (To be fair, I wouldn't want some of my more bizarre instant message conversations acted out by live people either)

Not only is it not porn.....

Through the peculiarities of YouTube, I came across "The Loving Couple" series.

"The Interrogation"

"Pie For Dinner"

(Embedding is disabled, hence the links)

The oddest thing about watching these (besides, the thought implied by the title that "this isn't going to turn out to be a porn") is that these two actors are in fact real-life husband and wife! That has to count up there as one of the most surprise casting decisions known to man, as its a couple that looks like the classic "too hot for him with her volumptuous figure and massive breasts" with "sleazy trailer trash so skinny that he blows away in the wind" pairing. Turns out to be a real pairing, which makes the couple-fight both look horrifically crappy and unrealistic and yet scarily realistic and disturbing all at the same time.

---

Other YouTube highlights from the "this isn't going to become porn but it sure looks like it could" genre:
"Dumbass"
"Deciding on a Pizza
"Alexa is a hoeeee"

"Biggie Smalls, Biggie Smalls, Biggie Smalls"

Sorry to crib two recent South Park episodes in a row (particularly when Canada's Teletoon Network has yet to air the tenth season), but a few days ago I came across "unimpressive story of the month": Snoop Doggy Dogg has been arrested for possession of a firearm and marijuana.

I remembered the affair tonight because of our own black people in Canadian cities with guns incident.

At the time my first thought was how this is the sort of thing to play directly into Calvin Broadus' hands: he's a "hardcore gangsta rapper" with a gun and some pot in his car. I got to thinking that this will net him another 75,000 album sales, and cement his reputation despite his mainstream and Hollywood success. It led me to conclude that what law enforcement agencies really need to do is lie. Don't let their myth and legend grow, stymie it early with a fake story "planting" non-evidence.

BURBANK, CALIFORNIA (AP) - Airport police officials at Bob Hope Airport have officially apologized to rap artist Calvin Broadus for the "unnecessary and unproductive" search of the musician's automobile.

The 35-year old was approached at his vehicle by airport authorities due to a minor traffic violation. Upon identifying the suspect, airport police conducted a search of both Broadus and his vehicle. "An investigation found no controlled substances or illegal weaponry in the vehicle," a police statement said.

Airport officials apologized for the public manner of the search, and felt that the search was unnecessary due to Broadus' pleasant cooperation with police authorities. Officials also believed that they caused Broadus undue embarassment, as while no illegal products were found within the vehicle, three legal copies of the homosexual pornographic magazine Machismo, a jar of K-Y Jelly, and three Brooks & Dunn CDs were removed from the vehicle and placed in evidence for almost four hours.

Broadus, who has performed bit parts in several major films and sold 17 million records, has not commented on the case since politely requesting back his property.

Trust me: if you want to hurt Snoop Dogg where it hurts, don't bother charging him with possession of drugs and guns: apologize for finding all the gay porn and profusely state how pleasant he is to work with!

SteynOnSouthpark

I'm reading Mark Steyn's article in the Chicago Sun-Times^† about his recent meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. Steyn's accounts of his meeting (along with several other conservative journalists) have been all rather telling of the picture of George W. Bush that the MSM would report if only they liked the answer. For example, Bush actually reads the books he says he does (which turns out to be a statement not about the illiteracy jokes but rather pretentious book-dropping):

And you think you're just having some sort of social chit-chat. My assistant, Tiffany, got a call this morning from an assistant to the President, who said Mark told the President that he had Andrew Roberts' e-mail address. Do you think you could ask Andrew Roberts to get in touch with the Oval Office, because we would like him to stop by when next he's in Washington. The President would like to talk about his book with him. I mean, he is absolutely not the guy, this sort of fratboy idiot that they paint him as. He's a man who is greatly...he's not interested in...you know, when Al Gore says that he's reading Stendhal, The Red And The Black, we think what a pretentious twit.

Anyways, what really caught my attention was from the aforementioned Sun-Times column, when Steyn asked Bush a question about "being on the offensive" (militarily) in Iraq, and got an extremely impassioned defense (hmmm, a defense on the offense):

Still, it was a different conversation than most Bush encounters with the media-political class. I happened to be plugging my book on a local radio show this week just as a Minnesota "conservative" (ish) Democrat joined the herd of stampeding donkeys explaining why they were now disowning their vote in favor of the Iraq war. What a sorry sight. It's not a question of whether you're "for" or "against" a war. Once you're in it, the choice is to win it or lose it. And, if you're arguing for what will look to most of the world like the latter option, you better understand what the consequences are. In this case, it would, in effect, end the American moment.

Does that bother people? Bush said something, en passant, that I brooded on all the way home. Asked about poll numbers, he said that 25 percent of the population are always against the war -- any war.

Now Steyn met with Bush on Thursday, and though the boys at Comedy Central can string together an episode in 3 days, -16 days is something of a stretch, so its awfully hard to say that Parker and Stone cribbed the President's lines.

What on earth am I talking about? Easy: South Park episode #1009: The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce. In the episode, Stan and Kyle are on the case to find out who really caused 9/11, only to be caught up in a massive web of conspiracies when a webmaster for a 9/11 conspiracy site is murdered by President Bush.

At the episode's conclusion, they found out that this entire time all the 9/11 conspiracy sites were in fact run by the Department of Justice, the murdered web-designer was alive and well, and that it was all part of President George W. Bush's master plan to make people believe that the all powerful U.S. federal government had engineered the attacks. When Kyle demanded to know why Bush didn't just tell people the truth about 9/11, the President responded

Kyle: I knew it! You didn't plan 9/11 and you really didn't shoot that guy!
Bush: Boys, you don't understand. People need to think we are all-powerful. That we control the world. If they know we weren't in charge of 9/11 then... we appear to control nothing.
Kyle: Well why don't you just tell people the truth?!
Bush: We do that too. And most people believe the truth. But one fourth of the population is retarded! If they wanna believe we control everything with intricate plans, why not let them?

(emphasis mine). I really didn't have much else to say on the matter, but I thought this was pretty interesting.

^† I've actually been to Chicago and have a photograph of myself in front of the Tribune and Sun-Times buildings downtown.

Bonus 9/11 South Park conspiracy theory link: An actual 9/11 conspiracy website discussing the episode:

I think the southpark guys will give about as much love to 911 truthers as they give to mel gibson. Probably less. Any conspiracy theory that winds up pointing at a cabal of zionists will certainly get the mark of insanity from a bunch of hollywood jewish folks. I bet you anything this will provide great confidence to the "I don't read, or investigate, but still know you're all crazy." crowd. Unabashed ignorance has become a badge of patriotism anymore. It works because it makes ill informed people feel in the know.

Matt stone, one of the creator of South Park, once said that he is a registered Republican. I don't want to imply anything, but he is also a secular Sephardic Jew. He doesn't like Michael Moore and once called him "fat".

This is going to be a hit piece, no doubt.

Jews have nothing to do with 9/11 being an inside job, Trey and Matt mislead your easily influenced mind into thinking that 9/11 theorists hate jews.

Riiiight...

Toronto-centric media finally wakes up to the Albertan Juggernaut

Check out today's news.google.ca "Canada" section:

Thats's right: Edmonton is front and centre in the national scene today. It reminds me (vaguely) of Colby Cosh's article from last year bringing up Edmonton's murder rate in comparison to the hysteria over a single dead girl in T.O.

I'm afraid I have no cave-in or murder insights at this time. Maybe later.

Update, 10:33pm: More violence information has been added to the post below.

Red Light Lounge shooting update

I have done some internet digging.

One of victims is named/nicknamed "J.C.", and is black.

Update, 10:33pm: The stabbing was (one of two) at the "Scream" rave show last night. Also apparently a stabbing at "Twilight" last night.

Update, October 30 2006 12:50am: An IM contact who was at the club confirms that all three of the victims were black, and that the Red Light Lounge is a predominantly black club.

>they we all black

> its a black bar

> well there was bar fight first

> 2 times

> then this shit happen

(on the rumours that it was a revenge hit over Varnado Stobbs)

> there were som great dancers there last night so that makes sence

Update, October 30 2006 3:18am: The Edmonton SUN reports that two of the three dead have been identified. Carribean Jacey Sydney Pinnock, 27. Sudanese immigrant Thomas Tipo Orak, 18. The rumours appear to be true:

Pinnock, the father of a nine-month-old boy, was a friend of Varnado Stobbs, who was gunned down outside a nightclub at 118 Avenue and 155 Street on Oct. 6, reportedly to settle an old score.

(Pinnock's mother insists the shootings are unrelated...good enough evidence for me that they are!) Note that neither of these men would seem to be "J.C.", but both are black.

Ethnic simulators and illogical claims by leftist Muslim apologists

I'm reading a very interesting post at the "Gates of Vienna" blog (that's an amazing name for a blog, incidently). It tells of a Swedish man in trouble with a "Centre Against Racism" because he wrote that he wanted an apartment away from multiculturalism and crime. He disseminates the various claims of the Centre, including associating them with 1984 and Cool Hand Luke, before getting onto a discussion about a computer program that models ethnic clumping in cities. Something I might want to run for Edmonton...

Bonus "Gates of Vienna" factoid: I think I've mentioned this before, but King Jan Sobieski of Poland defended Vienna against the Muslim hordes in a battle that ended in the wee hours of September 12, 1683...making Vienna the "other" September 11th

Update, 2:45pm: The software doesn't allow you to change, say, the size of the city (N=712391), the percentages of the population groups (G1=0.7569, G2=0.1015, G3=0.0462, G4=0.0424, G5=0.0530) where G5 would be "other" and we would have to assume a 0% "hold" on that case. In that event, one could construct an interesting development of the City of Edmonton, assuming that we didn't go fancy and pre-configure ethnic clumps in areas of the city. This would be a modelling nightmare, of course, but what can you do?

Speaking of Edmonton bar violence...

Since we're on the topic, earlier in the month when a man got his nose bitten off at Bar Wild I wrote a letter to the Edmonton Journal complaining about the BarLink system (my previous rant on it available here). As is getting disturbingly common these days, no newspaper will print my letters, so as a result my anonymity is still guaranteed when I post it here:

So let me get this straight: Edmonton Police cajoles several bars into adopting "BarLink", a system based out of Vancouver which digitally records the IDs of entering patrons and saves them on the computer forever. Several bars are guilty of not informing customers their ID is about to be scanned, you cannot "opt out" and still enter the premises, and your records are given away without your consent. In addition, you cannot have your record expunged by request, and all four of the above points put BarLink at odds with existing privacy legislation. Now we find out that after the dubious collection of all this personal information, it doesn't even work! The man who bit Aaron Helferty at Bar Wild had to be scanned by BarLink, and remains at large. Bar Wild's manager told Global TV that the individual will be banned from the bar. Banned from the bar!? All of this illegality built into the system and all it ends up being capable of is the same task a photograph at the front entrance used to do? The last twelve months have shown EPS more capable at breaking laws themselves as opposed to capturing criminals. My advice to EPS is sometime in 2007, shut down BarLink and try entering the law enforcement business.

Ouch. Heavy stuff. Almost as heavy as this letter about EPS I wrote to the Edmonton SUN on the same day:

I was all excited to play Edmonton SUN's new crime investigation contest. Unfortunately, by the time I got involved in the case, Edmonton Police Services had already rounded up the suspects (and a drunk teenage girl on Whyte Avenue unrelated to the crime), handcuffed them behind their backs, smacked them in the face with batons, and repeatedly tasered them. The only evidence I found left at the crime scene was the suspects newly-emptied wallets and an opened brown paper envelope that said "ACS" on it. I guess that's why "CSI Edmonton" just wasn't ready for prime time.

And since I was on a roll, I wrote to the Globe and Mail too: that letter also never made it into the paper:

I see Arar hasn't finished making political hay out of his "ordeal", and that he's now asked the CSIS watchdog to reopen the probe to his unpleasant stay in Syria. I would like to take this time to agree that CSIS should investigate this matter further. Specifically, CSIS has never told us (possibly because unlike Arar and the U.S. State Department, they don't know) the reason Maher Arar was imprisoned by the Syrians. I know the NDP talking points hold that Damascus is a puppet agency of Dick Cheney, but the claim that state-terrorist Syria would imprison a man that the U.S. believes is a terrorist just doesn't hold water. There may be a perfectly unfair reason why Arar ended up in a Mideastern gulag (and why his Canadian buddy Ahmad Abou-ElMaati ended up in that same jail), but if there is we've still yet to hear it. Until then, I agree with Orenthal James Arar, that this investigation is not closed, and CSIS has a little more probing to do.

Sunday morning rituals in Edmonton

1. Start a pot of coffee and toast a bagel
2. Start getting dressed for church
3. Tidy up the small mess from last night's pizza party
4. Read online newspapers to find out which bar the shooting was at last night

An IM from my Grande Prairie buddy reminded me to do the last one when I woke up this morning. Three killed in Edmonton nightclub shooting.

Do you want to know something seriously messed up? When he told me that there was another nightclub shooting, I went to news.google.ca to type "edmonton shooting" in the search string. As soon as I got to the "s", Firefox auto-completed based on previous search results: "edmonton shooting". Yes, that's right, you start looking up murders in Edmonton and your internet software has already been preconfigured to make this common task easier for you.

Police received a call about 2:30 a.m. Sunday from the Red Light Lounge at 100 Avenue and 105 St., Edmonton police spokesman Jeff Wuite told CTV Newsnet. The caller reported shots fired.

When police arrived at the scene, they found two adult male victims dead. Another male later died in hospital.

There are several more people being treated at hospital, Wuite said. One man is in serious condition and "all other injuries are considered to be minor."

Wuite also told The Canadian Press that it had been several months since at least three people were killed in one location, and in one incident.

But not too many months since Edmonton's last three murder day (which led to my brief foray into investigative journalism).

Update, 2:04pm: I have another post about EPS's own criminality and previous nightclub violence. In addition, I see this entry isn't making it into a lot of blogger search strings, so I'll add a bit here: Edmonton shooting downtown nightclub three dead several wounded.

Update, 2:12pm: A livejournal page reports that a person is seriously injured following a stabbing at another bar

Update, 4:19pm: An instant messenger contact informs me that her friend was at SideBar just off Whyte and that there was a person injured there following a shooting as well.

Update, October 30 2006 1:48am: A new post contains my updates on the subject from this point on.

Blogger.com conspiracy theroy

"Blogger beta will be not affected nor blogs that are hosted on the beta except for a few static images that we pull from www.blogger.com."

Well, a later update says "blogger and blogspot are back up", but this isn't true. I continue (as of 3:00am, the time of this post) to receive the following error when trying to post:


Seeing how this has been going on for several days now, is it not logical to assume that this is how Blogspot is intending to convince everybody to make the leap to Blogger Beta (and save them the trouble in automatically updating everybody's blog?) Make "regular" blogger so horrifically unreliable and unworkable that people will end up deciding that for the good of their blog they have no choice but to update? Only time will tell.

Update, 3:27am: See?

Dear Sonic 102.9....

Your Now playing... feature has always been a highlight. If there's a song I've never heard before playing on the radio in my car, or walking down Whyte eminating from a bar's patio, or on the stereo at Mill Creek Ravine pool, all I have to do is note the time, and then can look it up hours later in the comfort of my own home.

But what would be super-duper of you would be to have it so that when I select a time from 12 hours previous, it gives me the chart of songs in either direction of that time. So that I can find out what played at, say, 7:52pm and also say 4 songs ahead of 7:52 and 5 songs behind 7:52. Not only would this small programming change hugely benefit somebody who knows it was approximately a certain time that a song was played, but also cut down on the number of HTTP send requests your server would be enduring as somebody goes back song-by-song for twelve stinking hours. Also stop replacing old photos! Some of us still enjoy a certain K-Days photo album you once had up...

Sincerely yours,
Some guy who rarely listens to you, won't give his real name,
and saved the K-days photo on his hard drive

Like watching homo erectus and homo ergaster debate spherical Bessel functions

That's the impression I get reading this discussion on rabble.ca's messageboard about "Lorne Calvert: an utter disgrace (pandering to the rich)" and watching a bunch of leftists discussing economics. This is stuff purely out of their league.

You get the sense if you ever talked to the rabble.ca crowd about the mathematical modelling differences between Chicago and Austrian schools of economic thought, they'd plug their ears and start screaming "DWEM! DWEM!" at the tops of their lungs. Watching a debate over whether sales taxes are sufficiently progressive when combined with social programs makes you want to rip your own eyeballs out (or, better still, their eyeballs out).

Anyways, you can check out Kate at SDA's take on the Calvert tax cuts if you're looking for another angle (or some sort of, you know, information).

Here you'll only stick around if you want to learn all about spherical Bessel functions!

Housekeeping blog updates

Just a couple of post updates:

- The recent live weblogging of World Series Game 4 has been redone with all the photos hosted on Blogger rather than Flickr, the way I wanted to do it when photo uploading didn't work on gamenight.

- The old posts on the Alberta Navy and Air Force and Alberta Army and Marine Corps have been updated with links to the 3rd post in the series (factoring in annexing much of the north). I just linked to the Navy post on ABF's website, so it only makes sense to ensure that the internal navigation links are completed.

- Update, 5:51pm: I also had a busy post about the Koran and decided to link to my other uses of expressing the belief that Islam is a false religion spawned by Satan himself and delivered to earth by his evil prophet Mohammed and the satanic book The Koran

Update, 5:41pm: ABF has posted a portion of my Alberta military related comment onto the main page (along with my atrocious use of improper suffix), and I think this also a good time to mention that I could have liveblogged Game 5 after all: "the call" didn't come until right near the end of the game. I also could have used the rest of my cool graphics library, including this shot I'm particularly proud of about So Taguchi:

Congradulations St. Louis Cardinals

The first inning hasn't even come on us yet, and already the story of tonight is clear: the Detroit Tigers have lost Game 5. I didn't say "the Cardinals won". The top of the second has now arrived, but that doesn't matter. Justin Verlander has already thrown 31 pitches, including two that went wild (he only threw 5 all season). He ended up just throwing fastball after fastball trying to get one of them to be a strike (three walks issued by Verlander that inning, while Weaver just got his third strike on Ordonez).

Grilli was already warming up to get Verlander out of there, and if the Tigers have to rely on their bullpen, this game is already won. Congradulations Cardinals. I won't be here to congradulate you when it happens.

Game 5 - no live blogging

Well, Game 5 is on in about 20-30 minutes. As I've discussed before, I can't do the live weblogging tonight because I have plans (that were rescheduled from Thursday). And I'm going to be cleaning during the first 2-4 innings, so I won't be able to catch that either. Regardless, it looks like game over for the Detroit Tigers. I'm still going out on a limb and predicting them to win it. Why? How? I'm not entirely sure. Last night's performance means that Ivan Rodriguez and Curtis Guillen are going to be given a wider berth from Weaver than would otherwise have been expected. Not sure if this is going to help much: Monroe and Ordonez continue to be miserable excuses for offensive ballplayers. Right now Seth & Bone are trying to say that the story of Game 4 is the Granderson slip (or maybe the Rodney error). Neither are likely to repeat, and here's to hoping that Detroit can go without many errors. That might just be the new "key to the game". The offense is starting to come in strides. Verlander isn't an ace pitcher, but he has the right stuff to silence large chunks of the St. Louis lineup. I think it might be my man-crush on him, but on the Detroit side look to Brandon Inge to be the potential hero for the Tigers. He's excellent at drawing walks from right handers and can play long ball or small ball depending on the situation. Last night we saw him force plays in order to get the pitcher through the order as quickly as possible. Quick aside: did Albert Pujols wear lipstick during his press conference last night? I just took a screencap that didn't work, but both Pujols had some red ones. Weird.

It's a pity I can't do the live weblogging tonight. Blogger photo uploading works (I still have to go back to the gameday post from lastnight and replace all the Flickr photos with blogger ones), and I've got more nachos.

Selective hearing? Or selective reading?

From AlbertaTimes:

Only the most narrow-minded among us would paint all Muslims with the same brush. There is good and bad in any group of people, regardless of religion, race or origin. I still have fond memories of a group of truckers in Toronto who were all devout Muslims from Somalia. We’d spend hours at the local coffee shop discussing everything under the sun.

Right after 9/11, we had long discussions about terrorism and its connection to Islam into the wee morning hours. Those Somali truck drivers were as outraged at the events of the time as any other American or Canadian. One of them kept saying, “If you kill only one person, it’s as if you kill all of humanity.” Indeed, this is what it says, more or less, in the Koran.

And this would be why I wouldn't get too upset if a massive terrorism strike knocked out all of Toronto. The Albertans who gravitate there really give a distorted and dangerous image of who Albertans are. But I digress...

"If you kill only one person, it’s as if you kill all of humanity." Where (more or less) does it say that in the Koran? A google search string of the phrase brings up a lot of cases: mostly comments on blogs by the same person who runs AlbertaTimes (and mostly the same article). Repeating the same lie again and again does not make it true. This page explicitly states where the Koran says "You shall not kill yourselves" (4:29, which one can look up here). It then repeats the line about killing one person equals all of humanity, but does not give a reference. A google search of the phrase "kill one" searching only the submission.org site turns up only 2 responses, neither of which being the Quran translation. This is the left just going nutso again. Believing it to be the sort of line that Islam should contain, they simply attribute it to the Koran, hoping nobody actually notices. Well I noticed. (I also noticed that in general Werner Patels isn't that much of a liberal, but bear with me)

If you really want to learn about the Koran, the best place to do it (besides T-shirt hell) is The Skeptic's Annotated Koran.

2:191 And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.

Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. (But if they desist in their unbelief, then don't kill them.)

Bonus link: Turns out the Bible and the Koran agree on one thing: sometime in the future a man will set himself up at the Temple Mount and demand that the world murder every Christian and Jew residing amoung it. "The big difference is that the Bible doesn't call this man Jesus, it calls him the Antichrist." A reminder that yet again the Koran is not a book of God but a book written by Lucifer, promoted on earth by Satan's Prophet Mohammed in the form of the evil untrue Muslim false-religion

Update, October 28 2006 5:50pm: Wow, who knew this was going to be such a popular post? For interests sake, here are the other times I've used this "false Muslim religion" thing:
October 10th
October 15th
October 6th
September 18th

Bars with hot waitresses missing out on chances for promotion

Having an instant messenger conversation with my buddy in GP (who I scored a huge win against in fantasy baseball earlier this fall), and he brought up his adventures in Grande Prairie sports bars:

> there is a waitress at Hammerhead's... where (edited) and I happen to be going in about an hour... who looks EXACTLY like her

> pouty lips, smoooth neck, heaving busom

> and they wear miniskirts and thinstrapped tanktops and hooker boots... it's a sight to behold

> plus we have this other waitress who loves us, Megan, aka Jiggles. She has massive tits, tight body, and knows how to sashay her ass as she climbs the stairs... which we conveniently have a table at the foot of

Wouldn't it be nice if bars like this had websites, with pictures of their attractive customer-obtaining staff?

Well this one does. Sadly, Miss Megan does not appear on it. An oversight, one supposes. The bar (which I have been to) has mostly BC locations, which leads to an obvious and odd question: Why does Quesnel and Victoria have Calgary Flames clad waitresses? Aren't they both pretty close to Vancouver? They do have a team, you know...

The slow degeneration of comment spam

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

"Country vocalist Kenny Rogers repeatedly and vehemently denied rumors that he engaged in cheatin' behavior during Game 2 of the World Series"

Other recent baseball articles online at The Onion:

Joe Buck Can't Resist Urge To Join 'Go Cards!' Chant

Detroit Tigers Carry Jim Leyland To Bathroom

Kenny Rogers Denies Cheatin' During World Series

Hideki Matsui Unable To Grasp Translator's Explanation Of Where Cory Lidle Is

Remaining MLB Playoff Teams Say Things More Relaxed Without Yankees Around

Miguel Tejada Claims He's Never Heard Of Jason Grimsley, Steroids, Orioles

Bud Selig Nervously Informs Ozzie Guillen That White Sox Aren't Making Playoffs

Alfonso Soriano Regrets Joining 40-40 Club After Meeting Other Members

Roger Clemens Evidently Pretending To Pitch For New York Yankees

Cal Ripken Jr. Moves Into 8 Billionth Place On Consecutive-Games-Not-Played List

Post-Game Comments Reveal A-Rod Unsure Whether Yankees Won Or Lost

A-Rod: 'I Hate Being A New York Yankee'

Mets Acquire Guillermo Mota From Indians In Daring Midnight Raid

Randy Johnson Asks Chien-Ming Wang For Some Pitching Advice For A Pitcher Friend Of His

Lou Piniella's First Big Move As Cubs Manager Is To Resign

Trevor Hoffman: 'I Want To Be A Hall Of Famer Right Now'

World Series Overshadowed By Thrilling New MLB Labor Agreement

Alex Rodriguez Placed On Emotionally Disabled List

Baseball Imposes Tough New 'Three-Strikes-You're-Out' Rule

Yankees–Red Sox Rivalry Running Dangerously Low On Storylines

Experts Predict No NL Team Will Go Deep Into Playoffs

Confident Pedro Martinez Performs Own Rotator-Cuff Surgery

Frank Thomas Credits Recent Power Surge To Steroids

And finally, an NHL related one:
Zdeno Chara Out Two To Three Periods With Fractured Skull, Broken Leg

AlbertaBlog update: Recent editions don't include Third Edge of the Sword

Particles In Motion has been added to the bloglist. I know this because the first ever post was October 21st. Remember that I applied to join on September 11th.

That makes it official: time to re-submit.

Live weblogging World Series Game 4

(hit "reload" to refresh this entry if viewing on the evening of October 26, 2006 -- recent entries are at the bottom, rather than the top)

permalink - click here if the youtube videos on lower postings are slowing your enjoyment of this page)



5:01pm
Welcome to my first ever live weblogging experience. This is just the warmup post, its still over an hour until gametime. I will post again in a few minutes. I am saving 3 positions under here for "future" past-posts to keep this sticky for a while.

5:06pm
MLB.tv is playing "Stayin' Hot" right now, and are talking about the streakin' Tigers, and their concerns over the possibility of failure during this game. Also interesting is that the Tigers have had to switch hotels in St. Louis due to the rain delaying of this game. This is bad news for Detroit, naturally. Also relating how rain delays hurt the visiting team because boredom sets in with a situation like this.

5:13pm
The pre-game show just discussed The Catch. You can view The Catch on YouTube here.

5:29pm
"Not a trace of rain". Looks like we're within an hour of gametime!

5:43pm
Well, the game is going to be just a little over half an hour away, and I'm going to get on some dishwashing and cleaning before I spend 3 hours doing nothing but drinking beer and eating nachos and watching baseball and posting regular updates on this blog. See you at gametime!

5:46pm
Okay, one last post. KMOV in St. Louis has a stadium cam pointed live at Busch. I'm showing here a screencap of how it looks right now. (Sadly, this is taking an awful long time so I just gave up...I should have put all the images up last night, and just linked to them as need be today)

6:09pm
Well, it is as I feared. Blogger is currently unable to post photos, and no word as why this is. Kennedy at Seminary and Play It Again, Max are also impacted by this. Peace Corps Cape Verde is apparently not affected and C'est la vie has partial functionality.

6:18pm
Who's the black guy doing the national anthem? MLB.tv just cut from the live quiet stadium feed (where they were starting to announce who was singing with the Naval Academy providing colour guard) to the FOX-TV broadcast (where I just saw a name fade away from the screen). He's doing a nice straight-ahead job, and now this game is about to be underway. I sure wish blogger cooperated. Okay, he just went weird with "land of the FREEEEEE" and the last bits of the anthem. Why do people do this? Nobody does this in performances of other songs.

Did you ever heard the story of the frog who dreamed of being a king...and then be-CAY-AY-AY-AYYYYYYYYme one!

(photos still offline)

6:24pm
Joe Buck: I'm tired of looking at radar screens!

And I'm tired of looking at "Now uploading your photos". I've moved everything to Flickr for now at least. (Update October 28 4:31pm: moved everything back to blogger)

6:28pm
We're almost underway. Bonderman versus Suppan. Leyland vs. La Russa. 53 degrees Farenheit. Chance of rain. "The finish is clean. Inspect everything". Corporate sponsor? Or keeping an eye on Kenny Rogers? Graderson just took Ball 1 to start off the game.

6:31pm
Keys to the game. Collective effort from the Tigers. Take advantage of errors for Saint Lou. Graderson is out, and Craig Monroe up to the plate. Three pitches, two outs. This is not smart Detroit. Remember how you let Carpenter get away with as many pitches as an NHL team plays games all season?

6:35pm
First half inning over without so much as a whimper. Detroit needs to play with a lot more intensity, and I know the perils of saying something this soon. Busy uploading the rest of the graphics to Flickr so I can express myself in photos as I'd intended. I'm not a Flickr fan. I did do a little playing to make a little graphic showing off matchup for today, and have posted it at the top of this page. Enjoy!

6:39pm
Foul ball by Eckstein followed up by a single. Bonderman's pitch count is 9 already after a single batter, while Suppan has only pitched 7 in his entire first half-inning. Tigers falling back early.

6:42
I won't be posting so often, but Bonderman just struck out Pujols after the Tigers got a 643DP to make it two outs and none on. Onto the second inning, with Maglio Ordonez up to the plate. Over the postseason MLB.com brought in "enhanced gameday", and maybe I'd enjoy it if I had experience with it. For now though, I find "classic gameday" to be a more useful little website. Get it yourself at MLB.com, and click the little green baseball diamond next to the scoresheet on any active game (which today is just "the game" of course). Time to order pizza too, I think, to go with the AGD I'm sucking back. Sleeman and Strongbow waiting in the fridge. Of course, I got no cleaning done...

6:47pm

HOME RUN TIGERS! The "mighty" Sean Casey just homered to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead. Just before that hit they showed a good sign in the crowd: "Today's Supp: Tiger Stew!"
Remember all that talk of the heart of the order in a slump? Rodriguez just singled, and now it looks like Detroit has its heart back in place. FOX just made its first "Leyland and La Russa are friends" comment. This should be a drinking game. I'll take a sip in dedication to that.

6:54pm
The recently demoted Polonco hits deep and Rodriguez did an amazing job of tagging first and making it to second on the catch by Jim Edmonds (who just finished admonishing Chris Duncan for not warning him). A great play by Pudge, since now Brandon Inge gets a walk, Bonderman is up (0-2, likely to strike out), and the worst case scenario is the top of the order coming back up in the third. "Sup's On!" reads another sign. What, no stem cell jokes? Why is Suppan letting an 0-for-27 career hitter (Bonderman) go from 0-2 to 2-2 on three subsequent pitches?

7:03pm
Whaddidimiss? My computer crashed, as it is wont to do, and now MLB.tv is lagging like you wouldn't believe (remember that I don't have cable TV). It's the bottom second inning, I gather, but other than that I am without any knowledge. This may happen several times, and that concerns me. On the bright side, I got a few dishes done waiting for the lengthy reboot sequence. The FOX crew just discussed that the rain is some 3-4 hours away, but for now the players report that the field is in good condition, with the exception of the back left area of left field in front of the warning track. Let's see if that ends up meaning anything.

7:10pm

Second inning just completed. Looks to be a fast-running game. I just got a text message asking "what are you up to tonight?" -- er, sorry, "wut r U up t0 2nite". When responded with "watching baseball" the first response was "shitty". Women just don't understand.

7:14pm
Leadoff double for Granderson. MLB.tv has this weird tendency to stall just as a big play is starting. I thought the 2nd pitch in the at-bat was going to be the hit, as the screen froze just as the ball left Suppan's hand. It was just the ball to make a 2-0 count, though, and the next play where Granderson doubled a dribbler to deep right came through loud and clear. That's a real surprise. MLB.tv has more than its share of problems, and yet other than some chatter on Colby Cosh's page (where apparently half the city of Edmonton uses this program: myself, my buddy, Cosh and his two (or was it three?) letter writers). We should lobby as a group or something.

7:25pm
Shit on a brick. It's now 3-0 Detroit after my computer crashed again. I tune in just in time to watch Pudge Rodriguez shoot up the opposite field to score the third run. I think its MSIE (MLB.tv) and Firefox (Blogger/Flickr) together causing this trouble, I hope. I need a nice new computer for Christmas. Thanks to Gameday, I see that Sean Casey got his second RBI on a single to right field. Suppan just got a coach's visit, and that's a good sign for Detroit. The whole postseason, it seems the REAL "key to the game" for the Tigers is an early lead. That's the insight you get here rather than watching Joe Buck.

7:45pm
3-1 Cardinals, Pujols up to the plate with runners on 1st and 2nd with 2 outs (a "rare October RBI opportunity"), and Bonderman got out of it: Pujols hits a grounder to Inge, who gets it to first for the out. Are those raindrops I saw on the on-field cameras as they cut to the top of the 4th?

8:04pm
On Monday night I sat down at 7:58 to enjoy a new episode of CTV's Corner Gas. I then end up receiving a phone call, and the next thing I know its 8:26 and I've missed the episode. Tonight it happens again: a phone call at 7:35 (just before the last post), and now I just got off the phone in time to barely be aware of Molina doubling to left field scoring Scott Rolen and making this a 3-2 ballgame. 71 picthes now to Bonderman in the bottom of the 4th, Inge makes another assist, and now its the top of the 5th. On the downside, only 62 pitches in 4 innings for Suppan and the superior bullpen.

8:09pm
Suppan's not going to go much past 70 picthes. Tyler Johnson and Josh Kinney are now warming up in the bullpen.

8:28pm
Bonderman strikes out his fourth batter after 85 pitches and is holding steady as we enter the sixth inning. Still a long way to go, however, as St. Louis looks poised to start using their highly rested and strong performing bullpen with Polanco up to the plate. So far this hasn't been much of a wild game nor a dull game: the pitchers have been throwing well but not being lit up. So far Suppan's ERA is 5.40 and Bonderman's is 3.60. The FOX team just noted that the St. Louis Blues are playing the Red Wings coming up later this week. Polanco is now out, and FOX has to finish talking hockey to promote a bunch of stupid shows nobody cares about (including "The O.C." which apparently has done a "Desperate Housewives" style collapse, which is always enjoyable). Inge, my main man in 2005 fantasy play (due to his catcher eligibility) is up to the plate. With Bonderman coming up, no way Inge is going to see anything of value.

8:29pm
Inge grounds up to centre and makes it on base. Suppan didn't listen to me and fed a fastball right across the far-mid side of the plate (on a 3-2 count I might add). Bonderman bunts to Pujols, who has to tag the runner in front of him and lets Inge (not the fastest runner on earth) move to second base. Usually I take the sabremetrics angle that sac-bunting is not worth nearly as much as its claimed to be worth, but when its Bonderman and his complete inexperience hitting on the majors there is a pretty strong case for it. Now Granderson is up with a RISP and blows it. Suppan's three pitches are all in the same spot down and away, and Granderson swings and misses the first, takes the second, and hits the first to Pujols who struggles a small bit but makes the out. Where's that "FoxTrax" graphic when it can really tell you something. MLB Enhanced Gameday does a good job of it though.

8:43pm
Odd move by Leyland, warming up Fernando Rodney just after Bonderman wasted a plate appearance. Should have happened earlier, as Rolen doubles on his second pitch. Detroit was completely out of position for the inevitable (National League) bunt, and now its 1 out and a runner on 3rd in a 3-2 ballgame with Molina up to the plate. Now in the AL, nobody would sacrifice in that situation. In the NL, it would happen every time. The reason for this is the difference the DH spot makes in run production in the American verus the National League. But what I'm wondering, and maybe this takes an email to Baseball Prospectus or something, but is it a good idea to sacrifice to try and get an extra run at the cost of an out when playing against an American League team? It's worth some consideration, as Bonderman is pulled following another walk, this time to Molina. That's 4 walks and 6 hits in 5.1 innings, for a 1.88 WHIP on a very pissed off Bonderman.

8:57pm
Both Suppan and Bonderman are now out of the game, and this becomes a (early) battle of the bullpen. The edge now seems squarely in St. Louis' favour with the better bullpen (including a better closer-who-shouldn't-be-a-closer in Looper vs. Jones), the clutch performances of Pujols, the home crowd and stadium familiarity, and last at-bat. Rodney made a good addition to his resume in the bottom 0.2 of the 6th inning and I hope that he can keep it together at least for another inning. If they can hold off until the bottom 0.1 of the 7th or even the bottom 0.1 of the 8th to bring in Zumaya and Jones, that spells good news for Detroit. Do you think that Rodney/Grilli/Walker can handle that? Er, yeah, I'm worried too.

9:01pm

Molina shot a laser (I came up with that 5 seconds before Joe Buck did, really!) to second base, and now thanks to Guillen's baserunning Ordonez (0-3 so far tonight) has 1 out and a RISP to work with. Naturally he strikes out.

9:08pm
Colleen Schoendist is performing God Bless America (many Yanks I know believe this should have been the national anthem instead of Star Spangled Banner), and I'll take this time to plug that I'm also commenting on this game over at Sports Matter, that John Donovan has a writeup about the "83-win Cardinals", and there's another live weblog of tonight's game.

9:13pm

Tying run (Eckstein) on 2nd with no outs, and Granderson slips going for the ball. Oddly enough, the last time Tigers-Cardinals played in the WS there was a similar incident. TIE GAME! Rodney keeps the "Tigers pitching error" streak alive, barehanding a bunt down the firstbase line and throwing it too high, allowing Eckstein to score and Taguchi to be safe at second with no outs and a tie game in the bottom of the 7th. Zumaya is now warming up as Pujols steps to the plate.

9:17pm
MLB.tv is lagging beyond all belief again. Grilli and Zumaya warming up and Pudge calls a timeout, buying me some time to get MLB.tv updating again. The sound is live, but the picture is seizing regularly. This means that Edmonds should be hitting a homer right about now.

9:22pm
There, the picture is back. Edmonds' big hit was a foul, and a changeup sends him back to the dugout with nothing to show for it -- 85.0mph on release with 76.9mph on arrival. Just after I type this, Tim McCarver brings it up. I swear I'm beating them at this!

9:23pm
What are these St. Louis fans wearing on their head? A guy seemed have a pair of underwear (his hot girlfriends, I hope) on his head, and then they cut to a chubby middle aged white guy wearing a red balloon shaped like a Cleveland Indians logo.

9:26pm
Rodney just got Rolen, so now runners on first and second with two outs and the unimpressive Preston Wilson up to the plate. I see some more kids with these Cleveland-balloons, so I guess its a promotion. Also a woman wearing the "underwear" over her hat: must be a white towel promotion. And dear Lord the old grizzled woman they just showed has the widest frames ever. Seventh inning ends with a shot to left field, and St. Louis gets the lead mere seconds before Pujols is tagged out along the third base line. 4-3 game going into the 8th inning.

9:29pm
Only on my second beer of the night. None too bad. Sleeman's Silver Creek is all right, but hardly a Class "A" beer. And I've used up my patented sourcream/salsa combo bowl with some nice jalapeno/cheddar nachos.

9:33pm
Slump? What slump? Rodriguez gets his third hit in four at-bats, tearing full speed to second base and opening off the inning with a runner in scoring position and no outs. Buck/McCarver said that Leyland pondered resting him, but his experience as a catcher was too invaluable to leave sitting on the bench. Good move, and damn can that guy run. Hey St. Louis, don't you wish your catcher could run like that? I jest. Yadier isn't even the slowest Molina catching in the majors, let alone the slowest runner. Looper is up on the mound, and Wainwright/Flores are throwing just as Polonco sac bunts with Inge coming to the plate. Who is Saint Lou gonna use to close? Assuming the Cards get through this inning its a save situation.

9:35pm
Question? Answer. Wainwright is the Cardinals closer. When the hell did this happen? I see he got 3 saves this season.

9:40pm
Inge does his job! 4-4 tie and Pudge runs past home. This is poetic. Rodriguez had to stand there and watch Taguchi run past him to take a lead, and now he runs past Molina to give the Tigers a tie with one out and the Cardinals "closer" already falling into trouble with Zumaya warming up for the good guys. Detroit is starting to play with confidence, and that was sorely missing in the losses they played (and even in the Kenny Rogers victory). Even with a strikeout on Gomez, this is a game that looks to be on the turnaround for the Tigers. Again, the MLB.tv feed is annoyingly slower than the MLB Gameday page. I just saw a ball thrown to Graderson before Wainwright had even started getting ready. The next pitch will be a foul ball low...and it was! That gets annoying, but you keep watching to 'predict the future' and then get pissed off that it "ruins" the game for you. Its not like this is a taped game I'm watching the next day here. This is live! The only difference is a 5-6 second delay, probably one I can correct by closing MSIE on the next commercial break and then restarting. It's the bottom 8th now, so I'll try that.

9:48pm
Big Unit had his back surgery today. Naturally this will be bigger news in NYC than the current game. Also hilarious is George Steinbrenner fires Tigers from The Onion.

Zumaya just walked his first batter. The dude is trying to get himself banished from the major leagues for life! "[Molina] is one of the slowest runners in the National League in fact". I just said that!

9:50pm
Conventional wisdom says you don't lay down the bunt to advance Molina to second base because the fatass can't run to save his own buttocks. Modern wisdom says this isn't necessary because it takes eight pitches before Zumaya can throw a freaking strike.

9:52pm
That loveable MLB.tv again. Miles hits to Inge, and while Molina is out at second Miles is safe at first. Encarnacion is up to the plate, but this is all a radio show for me, I can only see a blur as Inge throws the ball from almost a minute ago.

9:55pm
A rare wild pitch gets past Rodriguez, and Encarnacion charges for first base, forgetting that he's automatically out if there's a runner on first (Miles). Miles does make it to second on the play, so now Zumaya has to start behaving himself with two outs and a tie game in the bottom of the 8th inning. Oh, I see it now. Those "Cleveland Indians" balloon hats are supposed to be around the head with the St. Louis arch running overhead. Nobody but a couple kids they just showed seem to be properly wearing them.

9:58pm
5-4 game on a play by Monroe that looks like something from Angels in the Outfield, bouncing just off the edge of his head glove. Now the top of the 9th inning, with the Cardinals up 5-4. Monroe-Guillen-Ordonez are up to the plate. The already-heros of this game, Casey and Pudge, won't come up to the plate unless a couple of the 2-3-4 jackasses can do their jobs. Monroe is 0-4, Guillen is 1-2 with two walks (not likely to happen now!), and Ordonez is a pathetic 0-4 with two strikeouts.

10:00pm
Another live blog about this game as MLB.tv goes back to lagging so much I want to cry.

10:02pm
Apparently Wainwright took over in early September. Well then. Monroe just struck out, and now with an 0-2 count against Guillen it looks like this game is in the bag for the Cardinals. It's a shame, really. Unless Guillen puts something together here, there's only one out left and the anemic Maglio Ordonez is going to be the one to get it. Well, maybe tomorrow's Game 5 will be better...

10:06pm
Ordonez is up to the plate after Guillen hits a grounder to Pujols. The ALCS was won with a walk-off homer by Ordonez, but that was then: Ordonez just lost out a race against David Eckstein's arm. And with that, a 5-4 Cardinals win and a 3-1 Cardinals lead in the 2006 World Series. Eckstein is declared the player of the game. It would have been Casey if not for Monroe's missed ball in the 8th, or Rodney's costly error, or Graderson's slipup. The Tigers coughed up a lead against perhaps the Cardinals most susceptible starting pitcher. Game 5 has already been announced: Weaver is taking to the plate. (The good Weaver who plays for St. Louis, not the shitty Weaver who plays for Anaheim). It's not yet decided, but it seems that Leyland will be playing verus Justin Verlander, and that matchup has to go to St. Louis. It's gonna be a tough uphill climb. The worst of all of it, I'm going to be as lousy at predicting series outcomes as Greg freaking Zaun.

10:15pm
Remember when the "Keys to the Game" said that the Tigers needed offensive performance from their entire lineup? They did: except for Ordonez and Monroe. Even Bonderman outdid those guys. But St. Louis' key to the game was "take advantage of mistakes" which they certainly did.

10:17pm

They've played good enough to be 3-1. And we've played good enough to be 1-3.

Jim Leyland speaking about the two teams. He's doing his press conference right now, and says he's talked to the team about the 4 pitcher errors (all costly) over 4 games of the World Series.

Right now I'm not very interested in Kurt Flood.

Leyland says that outside Verlander all the starters have done well, and that its not surprising that St. Louis is doing so well despite the Mark Mulder injury.

Reporter:"What do you guys have to do to win the series?"
Leyland:"Win three in a row"

Leyland says as I just did that the offense perked up, and referred to the Granderson slip as unfortunate. Leyland says that Tony La Russa -- WHO HE KNOWS BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN FRIENDS IN THE PAST -- is the "best" at making up a lineup based around the strengths and weaknesses of players who aren't superstars. Leyland also slammed somebody who asked about Kenny Rogers:

We need to win three games. Three games. Not one. If we had to win one game, this is game seven, maybe I'd play him. But we need to win three. Not one.

Leyland sure does give a good angry quote. He also says that he hopes nobody in the back has a sad negative attitude, because that's the attitude of a losing team not a winning one.

10:30pm
Now its La Russa's turn, and he calls Eckstein the hardest working player on his team, the "definition of a clutch player". He credits their success because they had to go head to head against Bonderman. La Russa says that what the Cards do well is tuning out distractions [except for the Kenny Rogers incident -ed] and that it was a tough game to win and they just had to play baseball and come through. La Russa defended his 83 wins, noted that Leyland had defended them in the media due to their injuries throughout the season, and once Edmonds/Eckstein/Rollin were all in place then the team changed around. La Russa noted that all the Cardinal runs tonight were runs with two outs, and that Suppan fought a hard match. Some of these questions make me want to tear out my own ribcage, as I'm listening to two part questions jammed into one and questions that half answer themselves. La Russa has to come up with answers on the fly, but the reporters have 5 minutes to refine questions they've been aware of all game. What's their excuse?

10:33pm
Did Jim Leyritz just call Yadier Molina "Bengie"? Eckstein is now in front of the microphone, but nothing he says sounds particularly interesting. They did double him up with Adam Wainwright, which could make this press conference more interesting or more confusing. Answer: confusing. Nothing here gives any rivalry or interesting banter.

10:53pm
Bad night in sports all around: I turn off the postgame show and turn on 630 CHED in time to hear that the Oilers lose in Phoenix 6-2. With that, I'm signing off on my first ever live weblog. Comments are always appreciated, even now that the "live" portion is over.