I dread, dread to think what the future will bring (When we're living in gangster times)

Doug:
Despite a whole season of following baseball day in and day out, yestahday's convergence of back-to-back "I need these" wins from both the Sox and Pats made me realize I'm not at full fan strength.

 

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Mike:
No joke. I was already emotionally drained from the 3 game sweep at Camden when it's ovah to Pittsburg for a rollacoasta Pats win that neahly sucked the soul outta me.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, and as if I'm not already totally feuillemort in complexion from it all this morning I open Drudge to find a 5-x headline that Barbra Streisand has "declared" a global warming emergency.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, it's one thing to turn a deaf ear to climatologists and other environmental scientists but ignore the actress who played not only Yentl but also Roz Focker? Fools!

 

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Doug:
Hey, it's about time some serious celebrity weight gets behind this crisis. I mean, c'mon, you think it's a mere coincidence Keith Foulke, in the prime of his life, goes down with not one but two knee injuries in the same season?

 

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Mike:
And don't forget Wells. In a normal climate, that shit just doesn't happen. It's eerie and, frankly, frightening.

 

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Doug:
If that isn't scary enough, there's the damn Yakuza Jap Mafia effin' things up for revenge of Hiroshima.

 

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Mike:
The powah of Yakuza is well known. You diss them and you're marked. When you least expect, expect!

 

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Doug:
Absolutely. Look at poor Gabe Kaplah. Says he hated playing in Japan after his brief and troubled stint with the Yomiuri Giants, gets waived, returns to the Sox, is contributing mightily when he all of a sudden he falls and snaps a tendon while rounding second base?

 

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Mike:
Yep, Yakuza can't be content with a devious weatha machine. Oh, no. They need to go and get an insta-cripple-beam as well. Bastids.

 

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Doug:
Damn them and damn their skanky comfort women as well.

 

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Comments

[Jason O.]

Funny as usual HB: But don't put too much stock in those global warming "experts" until you do a little investigation into their methods and potential motivations. Let me put it this way...climate "simulations" are highly dependent on assumptions the user feeds in during setup. It's child's play to demonstrate a predetermined conclusion.

One degree average global temp increase in the last 100 years? Sure, that's a measurable data point. Human beings have caused it? Not a shred of evidence.

[h.b.]

Jason,

Absolutely. I meant for the characters to be seen as totally sarcastic with respect to global warming. That's why I had them go into the whole Japanese mafia thing, to try and show how one can take random events like injuries and attach causes to them.

Perhaps I didn't pull that off as clearly as I'd have liked.

I'm as much of a "save the planet" guy as the next, but I do feel that what passes as "environmentalism" these days should be met with a heavy dose of skepticism.

[Kaz]

Do the oil companies have an ad on the side of the page somewhere that I missed?

More and more proof based on more sophisticated models continues to be generated. Just this past April, measurements of the energy coming to us from the sun and estimates of the energy leaving the planet showed that we're holding more energy than we're giving off. That energy is being held by the thickening layer of C02 and other "greenhouse" gases. In turn, it's radiating out as warmth.

To say that global warming doesn't exist because you can't believe the ever-increasing 0.5 degrees per year isn't just some natural flux is to say you don't believe we evolved from an ancestor of monkeys because you don't notice the loss of a bit of body hair and straightening of the spine on the species from one millenium to the next. Well, when your kids' kids' kids' kids look around and baseball's played underground in the Northwest Territories so as to keep it cool enough, at least you'll know you didn't put any trust in science to warn you of the outcome.

[spd_rdr]

The only global warming I care about right now is whether Schilling is going to burn the damned Jays tonight. Focus people!

[NV in SD]

While global warming is a very serious matter, I'm pretty sure it will go away if we just ignore it. Haven't you heard that the Sweedish air force is flying up into the atmosphere with thousands of rolls of cellophane and duct tape? Fear not, good people- the Swedes have our back .

I agree with spd_rdr- focus! 7 to go against the teeth of the AL East. These Jays have been our nemesis this year. We're gonna need the same timely hitting and consistent produation that we saw from the lineup in B'more over the weekend and, more importantly, the pitching needs to be lights out. If they don't hit the crap out of the ball as they have done to us all season, this series will be cake. That, and there's no way the O's can get swept in three consecutive series, right? Right?

Just win baby.

[Jason O.]

Kaz: Read my post carefully: That the earth is on average 1 degree F warmer now vs. 100 years ago is undeniable. Some regions are undeniably cooler than 100 years ago. Some regions are undeniably warmer.

The assertion that human behavior is the driver of this increase is a hypothesis, not a fact. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm just saying that your CO2 hypothesis is exceedingly difficult to verify with tests/experiments. A climate simulation predicting how warm it will be in 20, 50, 100 years is not a test, it is at best a relatively informed guess.

Furthermore, in terms of resource allocation, there sure-fire ways that the world can be made better. Free trade with developing nations. Serious commitment to stop the spread of HIV. Preventing the millions of deaths globally from insect borne illnesses, and illnesses resulting from not having clean water. Things like that will make an immediate and huge difference.

(My last post on this topic, hb)

How are the Sox gonna stop Reed Johnson?!?!??

[DizzyD]

Does this suspect look like A-Rod or what?

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=104143

[jcw]

man, I check this site out today and find myself in agreement with a MFY's fan... It must be the end of the world.

But as for right here and now, I'm with spd_rdr, too - just win, baby, just win.

[COD]

When the Yankee fan is the voice of reason it is time to stock up on bottled water and provisions. Armageddon is certainly near. The big question is will he still be this reasonable when he is watching the Sox in the playoffs ;)

I'll feel much better if Schilling can put together back to back solid starts. We'll see tonight...

[Jason O.]

COD: Sox in the playoffs?? No problem: As the Wild Card.

[Kaz]

I get a last response, then we'll agree to end this side-topic. I'm not discussing a simulation of climate temperatures 100 years from now. And I'm not using evidence as short-sighted as only a 1 degree change in the past 100 years. The latest study uses a new approach (look it up in the journal "Science" back in April 2005). It determines how much energy is coming to us from the sun over a given period. Over that same period, we need to be irradiating that same amount of energy back out into the solar system. If we give off less, then the energy remains in our system and the only way to handle that is by raising the temperature. The atmosphere (yes, in simulation..but the best and most highly accurate simulation of these things to date) is not returning as much as is coming in. The culprit in the model is greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. This starts to move "hypothesis" into "theory". Is it complete? Comprehensive? Perfect? No, but it's a heavily defensable idea with many facts backing it up (aka "a theory"). There may be another answer but it's highly doubtful and there certainly hasn't been anyone with anything of equal validity (normal oscillation of climate is a wild guess and has no foundations in observation).

The scariest part is that everything also suggests that much like anything in life, quitting now has further repercussions before it's able to start getting better. Even if we immediately went to solar power everywhere in the world tomorrow, the CO2 that's there will need a lot of time to reintegrate into the ecosystems. But at least it'd be the starting point of that reintegration as opposed to the current "damn the consequences" approach to energy policy.
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What does this have to do with the Red Sox and the pennant race?

Well, I think you'll be pleasantly amused if you take every tenth letter of the text above the dashed line.

Ok, I'll be pleasantly amused if you do it anyways...it doesn't spell a damned thing. Go O's!

[Kaz]

Speaking of simulations:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_odds.php

We've moved back up to over a 60% chance to make the playoffs for the first time in a few days. Still favored over the Yankees.

The AL winner is predicted to have 95.7 wins (call it 96 just to be safe). Second place comes in with 94 (93.9 to be accurate). That suggests that the Yankees would only win 3 more games while we win 5 (on average). For every game the Yankees win in the last series against Boston, they have to lose one against the O's. Just not sure I see the extra losses happening so the simulation must be saying that a high percentage of the time, the Yankees are taking 3 of 4 from Baltimore and then getting swept in Fenway (with an extra win thrown in here or there or an extra loss to the O's to give the average). Meanwhile we're getting our average 5 wins from sweeping the Yankees and only 2 of 4 from the Jays. If that's the case, then I'm going to be really stressed out over this week. I don't know how I can handle watching us go into the final series needing a sweep to go 2 games up on the Yankees.

Oh well, at least the odds say 60/40 at this point.

[Bob]

Just got my Red Sox playoff tickets in the mail. Positive omen, or negative gootch? BTW, anyone catch the Sports Reporters Sunday on ESPN? That spawn of Satan, Michael Kay, gave his closing shot about how A-Fraud should definitely be MVP. Michael Kay, who's employed and announces for none other than the MFYs. Shouldn't that minor point be prominently displayed on-screen while he delivers his "opinion"? Due-diligence and all? Instead, all he does is announce at the beginning of the show that he's "Michael Kay of ESPN Radio and the YES network." It'd be like having Remdog be on the show and say, "I'm Jerry Remy of Eastern Clothing of Watertown and NESN."

[h.b.]

Couldn't get back to this sooner, but just wanted to say regarding global warming that it's a myth, but rather that there are no easy solutions. It's not like it's a case of flipping a switch and saying, "There, we fixed that!"

And those the advocate solutions, be it ignoring it entirely or advocating for Kyoto, are all working some sort of political angle.

It's in looking at the political angle that I suggest we should be skeptical.

OK back to the regular programming.

[Aaron]

The Bush administration doesn't believe there is such a thing as global warming.

Given their track record, that should be enough to convince anyone that global warming does, in fact, exist.

Also: Go Sox.

[Jason O.]

"Whenever A harms or annoys B on behalf of X, then A is a scoundrel." --H.L. Mencken

[Monty]

Gotta agree w/Aaron. I know that humans have effed up our planet pretty bad, but the earth has rebounded from much worse. It'll still be here long after humans are dead & gone.
I also believe "Gangster" by the Specials is one great song HB.

[NYSoxfan]

H.B., just curious by the flip use of 'Jap' in the strip today. I'm not so sure it has been sufficiently neutered to have lost its sting as a racist/ethnic slur... any thoughts? Methinks Soxaholix readers (ex-Big Bri, et al) sophisticated enough to recognize 'yakuza' as being from them thar parts without the compound...

[h.b.]

... just curious by the flip use of 'Jap' in the strip today. I'm not so sure it has been sufficiently neutered to have lost its sting as a
racist/ethnic slur... any thoughts?

Yep. I think you're right in general -- At the same time, I kinda sorta started this blog in order to have fictional characters say things that have not, how shall we say, "been sufficiently neutered."

Linguistically, I'm aiming for authenticity. If you know what I mean.

[pudge]

Global warming: Aaron is wrong, the Bush administration does say it probably exists. What it does back off from is the weakest part of the environmentalist argument: that man is causing it.

And even less supported -- the part that h.b. effectively lampooned -- is the idea that it is responsible for all the odd weather we've seen in the last year, or decade, or whatever (though that didn't stop RFK Jr. from blaming George Bush and Haley Barbour for Hurricane Katrina ... not for the response to it, but to the hurricane itself).

As to Jap: I took it as h.b. intended. I used Jap a lot when I was a kid, but not in a racist way, for my part. Hell, my sister's adopted and Korean, it was just a word we used. When I got older I stopped using it because I realized people were offended by it, but lots of people didn't, and don't, stop. Which is fine, as it is not intended to be racist, and I hate P.C.ness, and am happy (heh, I typed "jappy" first; Freud or mere typo?) to see people ignore its precepts, and authenticity in this strip is appreciated as well.

[Kaz]

Why does MLB put out two seperate shirts that negate each other? Who's dumb enough to buy a shirt that the other side could laugh at when they end up beating them for the division crown?

I hate you, MLB...and I hate you, stupid fans who fuel their consumeristic feedings...

Ugh...I'm gonna go throw up now.