by John Walters
Bad Faith Arguments
In his latest “New Rules” installments, Bill Maher took on bad faith arguments on Real Time. You know, kind of like when Jack Morris made a bad attempt at Asian humor during last night’s Tigers-Angels game and now Twitter wants to see him hanged…
…or kinda like how Fox News and Newsmax is trying to destroy President Biden over America’s exit from Afghanistan while at the same time they’d be destroying him if more American lives were being lost there in a hopeless cause… while ignoring that his predecessor engineered this so that the Taliban would take over and the departing Afghan prez would leave with a $169 million parachute and land in the UAE… and also ignoring that it was George Bush who put us there.
Bad faith arguments happen on both sides of the aisle. I was recently scorned for “mansplaining” something, though that’s not at all what I was doing, but it occurred to me that if I pointed out that this was not the correct usage of mansplaining that it would be the ultimate in mansplaining. So I kept quiet, recognized it for the bad faith argument that it was, and moved on. That’s the thing with bad faith actors. They’re not worth your energy in terms of having a rational disagreement. They’re not looking to find common ground. They’re trying to cause an earthquake.
Would You Rent a Beach Cruiser From This Homie?
A somber reminder that you don’t need a license to be a parent. Someone else said it, and I agree, but it’s as if Alex Jones and Adam Duritz had a love child.
Heavyweight Investors Bout
In this corner, Cathie Wood… whose ARK Innovation ETF had a return of 150% last year and has been hailed as a CNBC superstar. It helps, of course, that she’s age-appropriate pretty and a good TV presence.
In the other corner, Michael Burry… the renegade character from The Big Short who profited youge-ly from shorting the housing market 15 or so years ago and who recently put in 2,355 put contracts against Wood’s fund. A put is basically a short bet based on conditions.
Wood is saying that Burry does not understand the innovation space. Burry is not saying much. Why should he? His track record speaks for him.
Fastball?
So the MH staff was noticing that the San Francisco Giants have baseball’s best record, and then the staff waxed wistful about the possibility of a Yankee-Giant Fall Classic… and then we looked up the last time these two franchises had met in a World Series.
The year was 1962.
The Yankees won that one in seven games, culminating in a 1-0 victory in Game 7 at Candlestick Park. But as we researched, what blew our minds was the length of time for each game. Remember, these are World Series contests, which regularly approach four hours these days.
The time for each game: 2 hours, 43 minutes; 2:11; 2:06; 2:55; 2:42; 2:00; and 2:29. That’s an average of 2 hours and 28 minutes over seven games.
Find Your Mojo
Remember when MH used to do “Where In The World?” Well, this is kind of like that except that we’ve already provided the answer. This shot is from Moyo Island, which used to be named Mojo Island and someone who is not very savvy in terms of marketing changed the name. It’s in the Pacific, just a little bit east of Bali. One of these days we need to get lost in this part of the world for six months. Who’s with us?
Another anachronism about the ’62 World Series: all seven games were day games. Also, six of the seven games had a complete game by one of the starting pitchers, four by the Yankees and two by the Giants. In 2021, only two teams (White Sox and Phillies) have as many as four complete games all season.
I listened to the game on radio. Mel Allen, Red Barber and Phil Rizzuto. Each did 3 innings radio solo while the other 2 did broadcast and color on TV. Forget who was announcing but Bobby Richardson caught a line drive off McCovey’s bat to win the game.
During the regular season home games started at 8PM. Sometime in the late 60’s changed to 7. As a young kid could watch a home game for 5 – 7 innings and catch the end with a transistor radio under the pillow. Can’t name 3 starters on any of major league teams today but still know the names and numbers of the starting lineup.
Going back to the archive’s stuck in my brain is an article I read when the USSR was stuck in Afghanistan that had two main points…Afghanistan has never successfully been invaded and even when not fighting outsiders, the villages will fight each other because they love to fight. Could be a wedding slight or some other such thing. History will show Afghanistan ended the Soviet Union and it certainly has challenged democracy in the US. We went there to eradicate the Taliban. We decided to build a democracy, disrupted the Middle East and caused human migration that increased nationalism around the globe with the result being our democracy is at risk. Other than the military for hire, who won?
Should have listened to Vizzini’s advice in the Princess Bride. Never fight a land war in Asia.