The Atlantic Wire quotes my betrayal of the Kansas City Royals

• Why Must I Root for A Small-Market Team! laments Joel at Cup O' Joel. A Kansas City Royals fan living in Philadelphia, Joel explains that it's "way more fun to root for a team whose objective is 'let's try to win the World Series next year' instead of 'maybe we'll be ready for above-.500 baseball in 2012 if everything pans out juuuuuuust right.'" His loyalty crumbling a bit, Joel adds,  "I might even buy my son a Phillies baseball cap."

via theatlanticwire.com

Me @Macworld: CNN debuts on iPad

On Tuesday morning, CNN launched its iPad app, a multimedia offering featuring text, photos, live video, and hourly two-minute updates from the news network's radio service.

via macworld.com

Afghanistan quagmire watch

If you've been reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran's meticulously reported pieces from Afghanistan documenting on-the-ground efforts by the U.S. military to implement its counterinsurgency strategy you get to a point where they start to sound very familiar. Not because the reporting isn't fantastic, but because the larger elements of the story, no matter how much the individual characters change, remain static: Pakistan's approach to the militants on its side of the border remains selective, and the Afghan government is a flawed partner at best. Counterinsurgency requires a legitimate government to protect and the United States doesn't have one now any more than it did when the strategy was announced. If a car doesn't have a working engine, you can put as many fancy sets of rims on it as you want, but it's not going to move unless you push it yourself. Right now, it looks to me like that's all the United States is doing.

via prospect.org

The atheism ad campaign: What would Jesus do?

In New York City, a large billboard promoting atheism at the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel, which a local affiliate of American Atheists paid for, has generated controversy. (The message: “You know it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason!)

The Fort Worth group is affiliated with the United Coalition of Reason, whose local chapters have bought bus ads in Detroit, northwest Arkansas, Philadelphia and Washington, as well as billboards in more than a dozen cities, among them Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Seattle and St. Louis. Most show a blue sky with variations on this message: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

The ads have incited anger in some places. Vandals destroyed two bus ads in Detroit, ruined a billboard in Tampa, Fla., and defaced 10 billboards in Sacramento. One billboard in Cincinnati was taken down after the landlord received threats.

via nytimes.com

Luke Chapter 9: "He said to the apostles, "When you travel, don't take a walking stick. Also, don't carry a bag, food, or money. Take for your trip only the clothes you are wearing. When you go into a house, stay there until it is time to leave. If the people in the town will not welcome you, go outside the town and shake their dust off of your feet. "

It's interesting to me. The only time the Jesus of the Gospels committed anything approaching violence was *actually against his co-religionists who were defiling the temple.* As for people who were indifferent or antagonistic to his message, his advice was to move on -- not to commit vandalism. Ah well.

Paul Krugman demands one miiiiiiilion dollars!

I’m still a couch potato, box of tissues close at hand. So I’m watching stuff my Tivo thought I might want to see, which happened to include the old Bond film Thunderball.

And I found myself thinking about inequality.

You see, there’s a scene early in the movie when the minions of SPECTRE, the evil conspiracy, are shown reporting on their profits from dastardly activities. And the numbers are … ludicrously small. I know that’s a running gag in Austin Powers, But it’s true, it’s true!

Even the big one — demanding a ransom for two stolen nuclear warheads — is 100 million pounds, $280 million. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $2 billion — or one-eighth of the Goldman Sachs bonus pool.

It’s just an indicator of how huge top incomes have become that what were once viewed as impressive numbers, the kind of thing only arch-villains might demand, now look trivial.

via krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

Yankees fans: Classy!

Talk radio, Twitter and various reports are all wondering this morning: Did the Phillies land Cliff Lee partly because his wife was abused by Yankees fans?

There were cups of beer thrown in her direction, spitting from a balcony above her, and a variety of shouted obscenities during the American League Championship Series, as her husband's Texas Rangers defeated the Bronx Bombers to head to the World Series.

"The fans did not do good things in my heart," Kristen Lee told USA Today. "When people are staring at you, and saying horrible things, it's hard not to take it personal."

via philly.com

Cliff Lee's camp denies this had anything to do with him signing in Philadelphia instead of New York. And I believe it: After all, if you're looking to avoid crude, crass and obnoxious fans -- well, signing in Philly wouldn't actually be the way to do that.

Are your chakras aligned, punk? Well, are they?

If it's good enough for Clint Eastwood, it's probably good enough for the average American soldier. But persuading thousands of troops with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan that the answer is to spend their days following the transcendental meditation mantras of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi may prove a hard sell.

Eastwood joined an array of celebrities to launch Operation Warrior Wellness today at the behest of David Lynch.

Some studies say that about one third of soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer PTSD. Lynch's own foundation plans to teach 10,000 transcendental meditation (TM) techniques.

In a reflection of the scepticism about the claimed benefits for TM by some academic and medical studies, Eastwood was also keen to dispel any notion that it should not be taken seriously.

"I'm a great supporter of transcendental meditation," he said. "I've been using it for almost 40 years now. It's a great tool for stress ... especially considering the stress our men and women of the armed forces are going through. There's enough studies out there that show that TM is something that could benefit everybody."

via guardian.co.uk

You know, if transcendental meditation helps soldiers mitigate the effects of PTSD, God bless 'em is all I can say. Still, it's always disconcerting to see Clint Eastwood go against type. I want to think of him as a mellowing, stoic proto-fascist dirty cop.