I know I said earlier that I’d keep the league open for signups through 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Friday, but due to overwhelming response thus far, we already have 14 teams signed on. Some are already of the opinion that 14’s too many, but I’m leaving it open for TWO more spots in the league this season.

Please email ASAP if you want one of ‘em. For those who’ve emailed and gotten the password already, if you snooze, you lose. Get me an email to irishtrojanbaseball AT yahoo DOT com to get the password. I’ll send the password to any who ask for it, but when it’s full of 16 teams, we’re all done.

So, get on it, if you want to join our league!

UPDATE–Really, really, the last call. 15 teams in, only one left.

FINAL UPDATE–League’s full. Looking forward to a good season, and a lot of fun. For those in the league, I’m going to give you until 6:00 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday to set your preferences for the autodraft. I’ll then run the draft, and you’ll have your starting team to work with. League games will probably start either on Saturday or Sunday. I’ll let you know.

In these Troubled Times, a little Nerding Out on Elections stuff always cheers me up :).

Accordingly, in sharply Ascending order of Significance :} ~

1. FRANCE will have a May 6 presidential Runoff, between a Rightie law-and-order champion nicknamed “Sarko”, and a Leftie lady named Ségolène who, in the Unlikely event that she wins, would be the nation’s first female president. / Ol’ Jacques Whatsisname is retiring. :)

2. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA will see an electionprocess Meltdown starting next February, if State Election Officials fail in their heroic effort to halt HAVA Act II ~ aka, Congress’s pell-mell rush to mandate Paper Trails To You (well, at least until they Meet Again :), because now they don’t trust the Computers which they had mandated in HAVA I so that the paper-punchcard-plagued 2000 could Never Happen Again.

3. NIGERIA’s April 21 election was a shameful Farce, both reflecting & exacerbating a continent-wide popular disillusionment with the functioning of African “democracy”.

AND, Lastly & most Importantly :) ~ even as Northern Ireland’s Brits-Out party, Sinn Fein, prepares to share power with the Unionists beginning May 8 ~

4. SCOTLAND holds an election May 3 for its devolved Parliament at Holyrood and the pro-independence Scottish National Party looks a good bet to Win!

From “The Scotsman”:

…With the election result expected to be extremely close and with only a tiny number of seats likely to separate Labour and the SNP, party managers know that their efforts in key swing seats between now and polling day could make the difference between victory and disaster.

…The Nationalists…used an interview with their most famous supporter, Sir Sean Connery, to launch an internet television station, SNPtv. Mr Salmond [the party leader] said: “These endorsements give us real momentum as we enter the final stages of this campaign. The SNP is moving forward, while Labour are stuck in a disastrous, negative campaign.”

…It is understood Labour’s internal polling shows its vote is hardening up in its traditional strongholds of west Scotland but there are potentially serious problems in parts of central Scotland and Fife.

The aim of the new phase of the Labour campaign is to shore up the Labour vote in these marginal areas, where all the main parties now agree the election will be won and lost…

I know you’ll all join me in watching the outcome with keen excitement a week from Thursday :).

(Footnote ~ not Altogether unrelatedly, in the Metaphorical sense at least, to a fiercely-fought Scottish election campaign: there’s a big Investigation of the recent unfortunate Spillover of more than 100 million litres of Effluent into the Firth of Forth. / Perhaps the probe will prove that the Party Platforms [colloquially called, Manifestoes ;] were just incapable of Containing it all. :)

PS: while I’m At It, here ~ gleefully anticipating the coming deconstruction of the United Kingdom via the Peaceful Politics of the Celts, that is :> ~ I might as well Throw in the Welsh branch of the operation for ye.

PPS: Hallooooo, Alasdair! :)

PPPS: Do understand, my apparent Britbashing is but a Pose. / Well. Mostly. :) Iow any Kingdom, however disunited ;}, whose national News service is still able to drily report, with nary a typographical Wink, that a chap who strolled into a London eatery and there proceeded to Detach his penis with a borrowed Kitchenknife, “was not thought to have any connection with the restaurant“, is Jolly Good by Me. No Connection with the restaurant, to be Sure. Thenkyewveddymuch, indeed. ;).

For the first time ever, astronomers have discovered an extrasolar planet similar to Earth. It is the right temperature to potentially support a substantial atmosphere and oceans of liquid water, and it is considered the most likely candidate yet found in the cosmos for possible extraterrestrial life. And it’s “only” 20.5 light-years away (approximately 120 trillion miles), orbiting one of the closest stars to us, Gliese 581.

“On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” says Xavier Delfosse, one of the scientists who discovered the planet.

“Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life.”

Cool.

More after the jump:

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A “full-scale riot” broke out at a prison in New Castle, Indiana (well southeast of South Bend, closer to Indianapolis) this afternoon, injuring two prison employees and causing Drudge to top his homepage with the headline “‘FULL-SCALE RIOT’ IN INDIANA PRISON…”

UPDATE: Video here:

Heh.

P.S. Manning may have President Bush’s affections, but it seems Tony Romo has Carrie Underwood’s.

I think Romo wins this one. I just wonder whether, when he takes the lovely Ms. Underwood’s bra off at the end of the night, he ever “fumbles the snap.”

I’ll be here all week, folks.

If you are like me and grew up in the 80’s, chances are you spent a fair amount of time playing (or watching friends play) Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Believe it or not, there are still people playing the game today, many of them trying to beat it as fast as possible. While the current record hovers just above 5 minutes, even more amazing was this recent talent demo by two roommates. Side-by-side speed runs through the game, live. Definitely nerdy, but still impressive.

Aaron points to a fascinating Esquire article by Chuck Klosterman which relates directly to the blog post I wrote earlier this month about why I hated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You may recall that I wrote:

Memories are the basic units of our existence. They are what makes life, life! If the fanciful memory-zapping technology of Eternal Sunshine actually existed, I would be just as repulsed by it as some people are by, for example, stem-cell research. There is something supra-biological about memories: they aren’t just collections of brain cells, they are the fundamental building-blocks of our experience on this earth, of our very humanity. You can’t just erase them, whatever they are. I could understand the urge to do so if a person were tormented by a memory of rape or torture or something, but to erase memories for such a trite purpose as forgetting a bad relationship would be profoundly immoral.

Given that sentiment, you can probably guess my immediate reaction to the drug that Klosterman describes:

[Propranolol] inhibits the chemical rush that makes memories hyperconcrete. It doesn’t erase memories, but it makes them more abstract and less painful. In theory, giving accident victims immediate doses of propranolol could dramatically change how lucidly they remember the horror of a specific experience. What’s even crazier is the possibility of propranolol working retroactively: It appears that patients might be able to erode traumas from the distant past by ingesting the drug and self-triggering memories on purpose (i.e., you repeatedly take propranolol and fixate on something that happened twenty years ago — over time, that specific memory grows hazy and normative).

It is hard to imagine how propranolol, used judiciously, wouldn’t be good for society. It’s impossible to justify why a nine-year-old who watched his parents get murdered needs to remember precisely what that looked (and felt) like; I’d feed that theoretical kid a cereal bowl of propranolol. But the problem (of course) is that our society is traditionally terrible at judicious drug use. And while the application of propranolol almost always seems reasonable on a case-by-case basis, the idea of propranolol is significantly more complicated. …

As is so often the case with scientific innovations that feel like hypothetical problems, it’s easy to imagine dystopian worst-case scenarios involving propranolol. What if the government used this drug to intensify the brutality of warfare, knowing the long-term cost on soldiers could be chemically mitigated? What if people used it simply because they didn’t want to fixate over ex-girlfriends [”such as Kate Winslet,” Klosterman adds in a footnote] or the 1982 NFC championship? It would seem that propranolol — like virtually everything else invented by man — has a short-term upside and a long-term consequence. The small picture provides benefits for victims of genuine pain; the big picture suggests a confused society that consciously elects to expunge the pain that makes us human.

Emphasis added, because I love how he echoes the title of my Eternal Sunshine post. Esquire rips off BrendanLoy.com! :) Anyway, I’m not sure I agree with Klosterman that “virtually everything…invented by man…has a short-term upside and a long-term consequence,” but leaving aside that bit of hyperbole, I think his analysis is pretty spot-on… right up until the paragraph that follows what I’ve just blockquoted. He loses me when he argues that using propranolol “to expunge the pain that makes us human” would be simply a more “effective” method of doing something we “already do all the time” — by way of alcohol abuse, escapist art, and nostalgicization* of the past — and that therefore, “I…don’t think it’s something we could ethically stop people from doing.”

As a logical matter, this conclusion simply doesn’t follow. There are plenty of instances where society chooses to ban, or at least discourage, a more “effective” means of doing something that is allowed when it’s done to a more limited, “less effective” extent. The decisive question in each case is whether the newfound “effectiveness” pushes things to a point where the negative effects on society become intolerable. But there is certainly no general ethical principle that says, if you ban any method of achieving a certain end, you must ban all methods of achieving that end. A few examples off the top of my head:

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Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in a bombing in Diyala province near a patrol base, the U.S. military confirms. Twenty more U.S. troops and an Iraq soldier were reportedly injured.

Visit CNN for the latest.

NPR takes a look at various Bush Administration officials potentially implicated in the U.S. Attorney kerfuffle. Professor Kelley is one of the nine (The Nine?) whom they profile. Oddly, he’s the only one they don’t have a photo for. I’m guessing he’s not too torn up about that, though…

Last month, shortly before spring break, my beloved Incase laptop carrying case broke. Specifically, the zipper broke, such that it became impossible to close the bag. This is obviously a problem, and because I was getting ready to travel, I needed a replacement bag fast. So, unable to find a store in South Bend that sells Incase bags, I went to Circuit City and bought the Saturn Messenger Bag, from SwissGear by Wenger. It’s a good bag — a worthy replacement for the large shoulder bag that I lost when my laptop was stolen in L.A. almost a year-and-a-half ago — and it was on sale. But its biggest advantage, the multitude of compartments for wires and iPods and such, is also its biggest weakness: it’s bigger and heavier than I like my primary laptop bag to be. It’s great for travel (like that aforementioned L.A. trip), and for other times when I need to carry a lot of extra accessories around with me, but it’s a bit bulky for everyday use (e.g., carrying my laptop to class). Still, I couldn’t really justify plopping down $50 on a replacement Incase bag so quickly after buying the Wenger bag.

But then I remembered something wonderful: my sister-and-brother-in-law, Jen and Sören, got me a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com for my birthday, which I hadn’t spent yet. And of course, Amazon.com sells everything, right? So I checked, and, lo and behold, yup, Amazon sells my Incase bag! Woohoo! So I just cashed in that gift certificate and bought it. With shipping, it cost $53.90 — so, $3.90 out of my pocket. That, I can justify. :) I should have it in 3-7 days. YAAAY! You have no idea how happy this makes me. Soon my precious PowerBook will be back in a sleek, form-fitting Incase bag, where it belongs, and I can use the Wenger bag on those select occasions when I need to carry more stuff around with me. Balance will be restored to the Force in the Brendan Loy Gadget Universe.

Now I just have to remember to go easy on the zipper. (And if it breaks again, despite my best efforts, then it would become a pattern, at which point I would call Incase and get all huffy with them. But hopefully it won’t come to that.)

Move over, Mark Buehrle: you’ve got nothin’ on Ashley and Katie Coker.

Jay’s post about the Irish Trojan Fantasy Baseball League is steadily scrolling down the page, so I figured I’d post another plug for it here. Sign up now! Deadline is 12:01 AM Friday morning. Autodraft is Saturday night. E-mail irishtrojanbaseball AT yahoo DOT com for the league password, and also leave a comment on Jay’s post saying you’re in.

[UPDATE: Bumped to top. Lots of room still. Sign up now! -ed.]

I don’t blog much about Iraq these days, because I find the whole situation — both military and political — extremely depressing, and I really have nothing constructive to say because I have no idea what we should do. But let me start small, by quoting and responding to Bill Kristol’s commentary on Harry Reid’s statement that the “war is lost“:

If he believes it is lost, he has an absolute responsibility to cut off that funding and bring those troops home as soon as possible — three months, six months, maybe, not 15 months, which is the appropriations bill that he just supported with this gradual withdrawal.

(Hat tip: InstaPundit.) On the one hand, Kristol’s got a good point, logically speaking. On the other hand, if Reid actually exercised that “absolute responsibility” and called for an immediate or near-immediate “precipitous withdrawal,” Republicans would accuse him of “not supporting the troops” (not that they aren’t already doing that, but the accusations would be even louder and angrier), and Kristol would be first in line to back them up. Which raises the question of whether Kristol and his ilk have an “absolute responsibility,” or any responsibility at all, to be honest and consistent in their commentary on such an important issue. If so, they’re failing miserably.

The Republicans have very consciously fashioned their rhetoric and their actions in order to put Democrats between a rock and a hard place, and as a side effect, have made honest debate impossible. Honest negative assessments of the war effort, without legislative action to back them up, are regarded as inherently off-limits and borderline unpatriotic — but legislative action to back up such remarks is considered even worse. So Democrats are left with no choice but to either a) support Bush’s surge, or b) be accused to “not supporting the troops.” Which isn’t to say that the Democrats aren’t equally calculating in their framing of the issue, or that their negative assessments are always honest; on the contrary, both sides are utterly shameless in their politicization of the war. (To read a critical response to Reid’s statement that doesn’t fall back on “how dare you stab our troops in the back” type rhetoric, check out what Joe Lieberman said. He might or might not be right, but at least he’s being honest, as always.)

I have no idea what the right answers are, I just know we’ll never find them by asking the wrong questions, which is what both sides are doing. Ross Douthat, at least, is asking a reasonable question of the unreasonable questioners:

Here’s my question: Is there any imaginable point in any imaginable conflict where Mark Levin would admit that the United States had lost a war? I don’t mean to be flip, and I say this as someone who generally thinks that the U.S. hasn’t necessarily lost in Iraq; we probably have, but the outcome is still sufficiently in doubt and the stakes sufficiently high that I want to give the “surge,” however ineffectual it may prove (or may already be proving), at least a Tom Friedmanesque six months to work. But even allowing that Reid shouldn’t have said what he said, it’s still the case that the United States can lose wars, like any world power; that we may well lose this one (in some sense, at least); and that at some point, in this struggle or another, some American politician will say “we’ve lost the war” and be entirely correct. Given this reality, I wish Levin (and many of his fellow “till the last dog dies” Iraq War backers) would clarify whether there’s any situation in which they would greet a U.S. defeat abroad with any response save a rote invocation of the stab-in-the-back narrative.

(Hat tip: The Moderate Voice.) More thoughts after the jump.

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The Observer’s Erin McGinn has a hilarious column in today’s paper about relationship drama on Facebook. Excerpt:

[S]etting your [relationship] status to “it’s complicated” … can mean anything from an on-again, off-again couple, to a regular hook-up from the Backer. In the worst-case scenario (or best, depending on your view), this setting is used in relationship warfare between a couple. …

Sometimes, Facebook relationship statuses are the best way to find out whether that drunken confession of love will still stand true in the sober light of day. “Megan” and “Mike” might have made out at the Feve, but is that going to translate into an actual status (”it’s complicated,” perhaps)?

It could just end up as a poke. …

Whole Facebook groups are devoted to determining how pokes should be used and who should actually get poked. Is it a friendly gesture? Is it indicative of a non-duLac approved desire of intimacy? Your idea of poking and the viewpoint of the person who you are poking (or who poked you) might not be the same, and that could lead to a potentially complicated situation.

Heh. It’s enough to make a 25-year-old married guy, less than four years out of college, feel like a veritable old geezer. Crazy kids today and their newfangled Facebook thingy…

Boris Yeltsin’s death has me reminiscing about some of his greatest hits…

Is it disrespectful to post funny videos of President Yeltsin on the day he died? Perhaps, but as Lisa said when I asked her that question just now, I hope that when I die, people have a good laugh about the funny things I did in my life. To wit, if this blog is still around when I die, I hereby give my guestbloggers permission to re-post the video of me tripping over the tennis net. In fact, I insist on it. :)

Besides, I’m remembering ol’ Boris fondly here. As I said in comments earlier, “It makes me nostalgic for the good old days when Russian presidents were merely drunken buffoons instead of wannabe fascists.”

R.I.P., President Yeltsin. May the vodka flow freely in heaven. :)