Posted 5:53 PM by Floyd

"Why are there one or more helicopters circling overhead?", Evan Kirchhoff wondered a few days back. I don't have an answer, but I do know what helicopters are doing near my house in Sky Londa: Picking up whatever is left of some poor motorcyclist who has taken a corner too fast. Two hundred yards up the road from me is the intersection of routes 84 and 35. On one corner is a long building that houses a general store and gas station, a real estate office, and a shuttered restaurant that now hosts receptions, corporate events, and other activities. (Like Dean meetups. Remember them?) On one side of this building is a lane leading to a gate, and behind the gate is a flat field. This is where red medical helicopters land to pick up crash victims several times each summer.

Posted 9:02 PM by Floyd

One hundred years ago, communists and socialists would argue that capitalist countries got rich by impoverishing their workers. This theory became less believable as the West got richer, so Lenin proposed a substitute theory: That capitalists got rich through colonialism, by exploiting less developed countries.

This assertion too became untenable as dozens of colonies attained their independence and remained mired in squalor. Other Third World countries traded with capitalist countries and became rich. Now the Commies claim that the free world has become rich not by exploiting poor persons, but by exploiting the poor Earth. That is what is claimed in this essay in today's San Jose Mercury News:

We need a balanced view of `productivity'

By Kumar Venkat

On my last visit to India, I walked into a restroom at the Bangalore airport and was greeted by an attendant whose job was to dispense liquid soap and paper towels. The work was, of course, superfluous, but he clearly needed the job and the tips he occasionally received.

So when the Indian government has its next budget crisis, they will throw this attendant out on his ass. He was informed for years, by the act of paying him, that his labor was of value, but he will find to his dismay that he does not have marketable skills.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't consider this charity.

Perhaps his labor could have been put to a more productive use elsewhere. But anyone who has seen the vast ocean of humanity in a large developing country like India has to wonder what kind of productivity can provide a decent life to everyone. Labor is not a scarce commodity in most developing regions of the world.

I can't even criticize these sentences; they have no coherence with each other and make no sense. Is Venkat saying that India is too large for its citizens to become wealthy? Well, China has more people and is rapidly approaching a Western middle class lifestyle. Maybe labor is not a scarce commodity, but what does that have to do with Indian gross national product? If one hundred million Indians worked on mass-production farms, and one hundred million Indians worked in mass-production factories, they could be one-half as efficient as Americans and still have more food and goods then the whole country would know what to do with.

In contrast, labor productivity is central to any discussion of the U.S. economy. High labor productivity is cited as one of the reasons for the slow job growth in the current economic recovery. Still, many economists believe that productivity growth is the ultimate source of wealth for everyone. But their arguments usually ignore the crucial role of natural resources.

Which are not fixed and have not become more expensive as China and other Third World countries modernize.

Labor remains expensive relative to natural resources such as energy and raw materials in industrialized countries. In response, new technologies increase productivity by reducing or eliminating human labor. In the past 100 years, the farm sector has gone from using 40 percent of the U.S. workforce to just 2 percent. The manufacturing sector is losing jobs to automation and the use of cheaper labor overseas. We now transact much of our business without ever seeing a human face or hearing a live voice.

Is it possible that we are over-optimizing one factor of production -- labor -- at the expense of other resources that are truly scarce?

It's obvious that Venkat, for all that he claims to be an entrepreneur, does not know jack fucking shit about how productivity increases are attained. American industry has increased its productivity by reducing inventory, by making distribution more efficient, and by eliminating waste. All of these measures increase productivity AND conserve energy and other resources.

Venkat apparently believes that corporate executives have access to a dial that has LABOR on one side and RAW MATERIALS on the other.

Redefining Progress, which develops tools and policies for sustainability, estimates that it takes 23.6 acres of biologically productive land and water to support an average American's resource consumption. The per-capita footprint is 3.4 acres in China and 1.9 acres in India. Humanity's total ecological footprint is nearly 16 percent higher than Earth's capacity, indicating an unsustainable depletion of natural capital.

So we can believe that one-sixth of the Earth is being depleted each year -- which means that my fantasy league pitchers have until 2010 to get their ERA's to a reasonable level. (I don't think they'll make it.) Or we can believe that "Redefining Progress" is full of crap.

(I love that name, "Redefining Progress" -- though only because I live in a stable society and can ignore its hint of Khmer Rouge mentality. Commies piss in the Third World poor's pockets and tell them that it's raining.)

The United States has the largest per-capita ecological footprint and consumes more than 20 percent of all resources.

The United States has the largest economy and produces more than 20 percent of the world's goods. American progress has been based on technology and innovation and does not require masses of raw materials, no matter what silly formulas are cooked up by the folks at Redefining Progress.

Developing countries aspire to a similar living standard but face the enormous task of lifting hundreds of millions out of deep poverty. Their plan for economic growth depends on using large amounts of additional natural resources. China, for example, has become an insatiable consumer of raw materials, and its energy consumption expected to more than double by 2030.

So if China has become an "insatiable consumer of raw materials," and the world already uses up 116% of the world's resources (presumably the iron in the core is being replaced with used styrofoam peanuts), then there should be some evidence that raw material prices are skyrocketing.

Right?

Well, you would think Venkat would mention it. Funny how that works.

At the same time, nearly 750 million people around the world are either unemployed or classified as ``working poor.''

Thanks to people like Venkat, that number used to be much higher.

... Some resource economists have advocated an environmental tax shift in developed nations, which would reduce the tax burden on labor and increase it on fossil fuels, virgin raw materials, waste generation, and pollution. The idea is to encourage more employment of labor and less of scarce natural resources. ...

We see the hatred for humanity that underpins the remants of the Left. Marx and Lenin pretended to care about poor people, and the conditions and circumstances which they complained about were shocking and in many cases injust. Venkat and his ilk can make socialism popular only by marrying it to pagan Earth-worship. And so Mother Earth -- with her "virgin raw materials" -- becomes more important than human beings. Don't drill for oil or dig coal -- just hook up a bunch of low-paid coolees to a big hamster wheel! They're tax-free!

Posted 12:36 PM by Floyd

Is it just me, or does Rangers centerfielder Kevin Mench -- who showed up in the Colosseum with no facial or cranial hair at all -- look like jean pitchthing and creepy horror doll Buddy Lee?

Posted 12:30 PM by Floyd

Yesterday was the Oakland Athletics' opener. I sat down to dinner just as the opening ceremonies started. (The first ball was thrown out by Bethany Hamilton, a 14-year old Hawaiian who surfs competitively despite having lost entire left arm to a shark attack. Zito, Chavez, and Hatteberg presented her with an Oakland A's surfboard autographed by the team. It was a touching moment, and worth considering when you complain about life's petty problems -- like losing a bridge knockout or being in last place in your fantasy baseball league, to use some hypothetical examples.)

Tim Hudson squared off against Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers, who has had considerable success (19-3) at the Colosseum. It was a one-run game throughout the night, and in the eighth inning Eric Byrnes came through with a double to put Oakland on top 5-4.

It's long past time for me to add some fine baseball blogs to the blogroll. Please welcome:

• David Pinto's Baseball Musings, the Instapundit of baseball blogging.
  
• The caustic and insightful Elephants in Oakland.
  
• Tyler Bleszinski's Athletics Nation.
  

Posted 11:05 AM by Floyd

A bit of advice for Wonkette: If a typical day's satire involves making fun of Tina Brown and saying "ass-fucking" every time a Republican politician is mentioned, maybe picking a fight with Michele Catalano is not such a good idea.

Posted 3:37 PM by Floyd

Mealy-mouthed idiocy from today's San Jose Mercury News letters page:

Al-Fallujah photos reveal Iraqi rage

Thanks to the Mercury News for showing the pictures of the attack in Al-Fallujah, Iraq, (Page 15A, April 1) and the gruesome display of the corpses of the U.S. government contractors. Without the pictures, I do not think I would have realized the extremity of the assault. Readers need to see pictures of this nature to be affected. This was a horrific act, but it does convey the hatred and rage over the occupation by the coalition forces.

Both President Bush and John Kerry are saying we can't ``cut and run'' in spite of this grisly attack. When have we heard that before? Sounds like Vietnam, doesn't it?

Gertrude Welch
Cupertino

I wonder if two-thirds of a century ago, there were people writing letters to newspapers saying that, yes it was a shame about all those Jews who were killed and dispossessed by Krystallnacht, but it did reveal Nazi rage and do we really want to get involved with fighting those sorts of people?

When did it become received wisdom among the left that all anger and hatred is justified?

Posted 2:48 PM by Floyd

Alright, enough of this baseball nonsense. Long before I was a fantasy baseball blogging geek, I was a bridge blogging geek. This weekend was District 21's Flight B Grand National Teams competition, a five-round knockout to determine who would represent the district at the Summer Nationals in New York. My team lost in the quarterfinal last night to the best team in the event. Here are two interesting declarer play problems from yesterday's sessions.

At none vulnerable I was in third chair with KT2 A53 AQ64 K74.

Scott dealt and passed, showing 0-9 high card points as we open all hands with 10 or more points. RHO opened 1, and I had an easy 1N overcall. Scott responded 2 Stayman. RHO thought a little bit but passed. I rebid 2 and Scott rebid 2N, inviting game and not necessarily showing a four-card major.

I was toward the bottom of my range, but I liked my quality high cards and figured that I could play two-on-one against my RHO. So I bid 3N.

LHO led the 6 and this is what I caught in dummy (my hand repeated for convenience):

QJ64
KJ82
3
J986

KT2
A53
AQ64
K74

I played low -- I could always try the heart finesse later -- and RHO played the 9. I won the ace and stopped to consider the lead. If the six was fourth-best, then LHO had led from QT76. (A shortcut to figure this out is the "Rule of Eleven" -- subtract the rank of the card led from 11, and that is the number of higher cards in the non-leaders' hands. Eleven minus six is five, and with four higher cards in my hand, there was one in RHO's hand and he had just played it.)

So I led a heart to the eight, which held (RHO pitching a diamond). I led a spade to the king and the ten of spades, which RHO won. Now I had eight tricks.

RHO led back the J. I was about to finesse this for my ninth trick -- if RHO didn't have the diamond king, he had an 11-count. But I forced myself to think it through. Suppose I won the ace, hooked the heart, and ran my majors. That would lead to a four-card ending. I could keep Qx Kx in hand, and when I led a club RHO could win the ace but I would still have diamonds stopped if he had the king.

And what if LHO had the king of diamonds? Club, won with the ace. Diamond to the king. Heart cashed (my run of the hearts would set up LHO's fifth heart). But if LHO started with Kx, he would be out of diamonds and would have to give me my ninth trick with a club.

So I rose ace of diamonds, finessed the heart, and ran my majors. RHO had only a doubleton spade; he pitched a diamond and three clubs (including the queen and ten), so he had pitched down to a bare club ace and three diamonds.

I led a club and RHO won. He led a diamond, I rose queen, and LHO won! He cashed a heart and led a club, as he had started with a doubleton diamond, so I made three notrump and my caution was rewarded.

---

On this next hand, I was declarer in four hearts after a Caroline Club auction that wasn't terribly important. (For the curious: 1 - 2, 2 - 2N, 3N - 4.) Here were the hands:

AKT5
JT6
T53
JT2

J92
AQ874
A8
AQ6

LHO led the K and I ducked. He continued diamonds and I won the A. I led a spade to the ace and led the J. This hand looked pretty simple; I would make if any one of three finesses succeeded.

Well, maybe not. The jack of hearts held the trick, but LHO pitched 9!

I went into a long study and decided to finesse in clubs. Fortunately the king was onside. I ran the jack, played a club to the queen, and cashed the ace. (RHO should have pitched the king, but made it easy for me to count the hand by keeping it.)

Now what? I had six tricks in and might or might not score more spades. RHO had five hearts, at least two diamonds, and four clubs, so there was room for a second spade. If I wasn't taking any more spades I needed to score all four trumps.

I could play a spade to the king and take another finesse. But what if RHO ruffed the king? I would ruff the diamond return and lead another spade. LHO would win while RHO pitched his king of clubs. A fourth spade lead would put me in my hand at trick 11, and RHO would get his king of hearts.

I thought for a long time until I realized that the finesse was safe; even if RHO won a stiff queen, he would be endplayed and then endplayed again. I ran the J, which RHO ruffed. He returned his last diamond, which I ruffed. A spade to the king was ruffed and I showed him my hand. If he returned a low trump I would run it to my ten and finesse. If he returned the king of trumps I would win with the ace and win the queen and ten separately. If he returned his club I would ruff small in hand and overruff in dummy with the ten. Making four!

Posted 2:11 PM by Floyd

Whew! Troubled (i.e., dipshit jerk) outfielder Milton Bradley was barred from Cleveland Indians spring training last week because he got into a fight with his manager. I didn't like this news because Bradley is the "utility" player for my fantasy baseball team. The Indians claimed that four to eight teams were interested in Bradley, but I was concerned he would not play the start of the season. Fortunately he was traded today to the LA Dodgers.

A few days ago I also picked up my bench player and fourth Mariner, reliever Julio Mateo.