ColbyCosh.com

I don't know who you've been listening to, but I'd say the mascots were not only pretty good, they seem to have been very well received. The criticisms have been muted ("too Asian" being the only one that seems to get repeated much, and often in praise).

Not only are they pretty good looking on their own merits, they're astoundingly good compared to other olympic mascots.

Tim Raines was a joy to watch, he really was. His ONLY weakness was that his throwing arm was a minus, but even then he made up for it with accurate throws to the cutoff man and of course he had incredible speed.

I'm not weakling and this isn't the beer talking, but if they vote him in I'll cry. As a member of the Montreal Expos/Brooklyn Dodgers baseball orphans club, I can say with authority Tim Raines was the finest player to ever wear that uniform.

I guess JK is trying to argue that it might be ok to shoot a burglar if you are poor and without insurance but it would be inappropriate for the fully insured, technologically advanced citizen. I am just waiting for a prosecutor to use JK's CD/MP3 ratio to convict a hapless home owner who is not quite as detached from his earthly belongings.

Tim Raines was a joy to watch, he really was. His ONLY weakness was that his throwing arm was a minus, but even then he made up for it with accurate throws to the cutoff man and of course he had incredible speed.

And of course his speed made him a huge threat to throw out runners... time and time again Raines threw out runners at the plate trying to score from second on a single, because he got to the ball and got it in so phenomenally fast.

I guess JK is trying to argue that it might be ok to shoot a burglar if you are poor and without insurance but it would be inappropriate for the fully insured, technologically advanced citizen.

No, you have to separate the general point (that we have police forces, 911, insurance, etc.) from his particular point about himself (he has no interest in getting into a battle over the stuff in his house).

But let me reiterate a point made very well in the discussion (which was excellent)... shooting burglars on your property as they are running from the scene of a robbery is not "self-defence" and there is no defence of self-defence available in such cases. And the doctrine of self-defence definitely does not apply to the general case of shooting someone who is trying to burgle your house. (Although it might apply in some circumstances).

The irrationality in deciding when there's a right to sovereignty based upon what the intruder on your property is up to at that moment is (thankfully) not applied on a grander scale. Think how great an invader would have it if countries worldwide accepted as fact that if the invading army was leaving then they were "out of bounds" as it were: the army could blitz in and decimate defenses, and as soon as a counterattack began simply retreat and repeat at leisure. Now realize on the small scale how it means exactly the same thing: the right to defend yourself (or your land, or your stereo) becomes meaningless if the moment you start to defend it the offender can put you in the wrong just by trying to escape.

To tie it back into the baseball posts, it reminds me of Thorn/Palmer's "Hidden Game of Baseball" discussion about stealing bases (this analogy isn't as strained as it may seem). The thing to remember about stealing a bag (except in the very late stages of close games, when the goal is not to score many runs but simply one) is that it becomes advisable (profitable, you might say) when the run production following a successful steal is greater than the run production following an unsuccessful steal -- weighted of course to the likelihood of the steal being successful. The issue here is that anything making failure less costly increases the value of the attempt: stealing second in the bottom of the ninth with the score tied and two outs is far better than stealing second in the bottom of the seventh with the score tied and one out. Likewise, stealing a TV where the law is on Tybalt/Kay's side is far better than stealing a TV where the law is on Gunter/Cosh's side. (Critics might argue that just as some managers are dumb enough to steal in the second situation anyways, so will criminals who on the whole are probably at least slightly dumber than the modern-day MLB manager. While this is certainly true, setting aside the obvious property rights aspect, why on earth would the legal system take actions that would make crime a "smarter" action without very good moral rationale?)

As a final Expos aside, in their final years Montreal never had an English language television deal. With the 2000s proliferation of SDTV-quality internet feeds, digital/HD team-specific cable packages, etc. isn't it a little ironic that the Expos went belly up at the dawn of the era where they could regain support outside of Montréal-Est?

"Ordinary bronze?"

Aren't VCs minted from cannon captured during the Crimean War? That whole "half a league, half a league, half a league onward" thing?

Thanks for the Rita Mitsouko link, I really enjoyed their music in the 80's. One thing I learned though; the lead singer, Catherine Ringer, was a porn actress before the band. Go figure.

Perhaps the most appalling part of the debate on the Horn case is the repeated mention of insurance, and the belief that this somehow makes any sort of difference. Just who does Mr. Kay believe pays for losses covered by insurance, anyway? Apparently he believes that he has no obligation to protect his property, because the thieves are actually stealing from his fellow policyholders, not him, which hardly strikes me as a moral position. I'll bet that Mr. Kay is also one of the first to complain about high insurance rates, and about Big Business "ripping us off", and never even thinks about any possible connection. As noted, depressing and appalling...