LameList!

Pike Place Fish is a major tourist attraction in Seattle.  Fishmongers skillfully toss a purchased fish from the front display  to the back side of the counter.  Crowds gather and cheer.  It’s quite a show and is often on TV for local interest on national broadcasts of a major sports events.

According to the Seattle Times,  these fish-tossers are scheduled to make a presentation at an upcoming convention of veterinarians.   Enter PETA, the animal rights people. From their letter to the vets:

You should know that people who care about animals are appalled that a veterinary organization, whose purpose is to represent the interests of those whose jobs involve protecting the well-being of animals would promote an event in which animals are treated so disrespectfully and are handled as if they were toys.

These fish are dead. Gutted. Cleaned. About to be fileted and wrapped up to be taken home and pan seared or grilled.  I love salmon, especially with a nice Oregon Pinot Noir.

There is even a business book from these fish mongers called When Fish Fly: Lessons For Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace From the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market.

 From yesterday’s Wall St. Journal,  a tidbit from their panel on “The Future of Sports,” Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball, on steroid use in baseball (bold for emphasis is mine):

I’ve had one writer after another come to me and say over the past decade, “I don’t know how they expected you to know. I was in the clubhouse every day.” And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to know. Or that I was in denial. I merely just didn’t know. So, if you’re sitting up in your office somewhere, how did people think you or others would know? When we didn’t know. And I don’t really think they were in denial. I think — I say this very candidly — in the retrospective history, it’s always easy 10, 15, 20 years later to tell somebody, “You should have known.” It isn’t only the steroid thing. It’s in anything in life. Whether it’s in political issues or foreign affairs or anything else. You can look back 15 or 20 years later and be awfully smart.

What a lame, bureaucratic attitude and excuse. No leadership. No accountability.  

Get out of your cushy office for once, Bud. 

Today, we learn that Manny Ramirez Is Banned for 50 Games after testing positive for a banned substance. This past week brought us news from a forthcoming book from a Sports Illustrated reporter that Alex Rodriquez may have used steriods in high school and as a Yankee despite his repeated denials.

Here are some funny images of the juiced athletes.  Might as well laugh at it. That the steriods thing has been going on for so long in baseball is pathetic.

Put any variation of the word lame in a headline and I can’t pass it up:  ‘Tumblarity’ A Metric to Measure Lameness on Tumblr

Microblogging platform and lazy book deal factory Tumblr introduced a “feature” yesterday called Tumblarity, a single convenient number that lets users know exactly how many terrible blogs are better than theirs.

Alas, my interest in the story tumbled lamely thenceforth.

Five players on the University of Oregon Ultimate Frisbee team played without pants and underwear. Now their season has been cancelled by a five-member student board.

Team co-captain was only slightly apologetic:

Speeding, drinking, nudity — they’re not bad things. They’re things a big portion of the community doesn’t think are wrong.

To run around naked is just kind of a hippie, ultimate thing. We didn’t think there was anything wrong at the time.

“We put on the longest shirts we had,” pleaded one player.

I didn’t even know that Ultimate Frisbee was an intercollegiate sport.

Something is dreadfully wrong when I can use the internet to easily order all sorts of prescription medications, including tightly controlled substances, as well as the human growth hormones and such stuff (if email and comment spam is to be believed).

Yet I cannot easily order prescription medicine my cat takes daily. My vet writes the prescription and fills it. One vet acts as prescriber and pharmacy and I am unable to get a copy of that prescription. All online vets that I have checked require a faxed copy of the prescription.  No cheap Canadian meds for my kitty.

(kitten photo from Flikr via Creative Commons license)

Look at those photos of tax day protests — those anti-Obama “tea party” events to protest taxes, government bailouts and big spending budget proposals.

Did you ever notice how the faces in the crowds are mostly retirees who are the benefactors of the biggest government entitlements ever: Social Security and Medicare?

 
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Another meal at the “Irony Café:”   we went to a huge steak fry on Good Friday. Heathens have more fun.

I’m a sucker for a story that uses the words “spies,” “hackers,” “Chinese” and “Russian” in the same article.

The WSJ ran an interesting article about cyberspies penetrating our electrical grid (despite the fact that the article did not live up to its alarmist headline “Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies.”

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. 

Several hours after reading this I took my 5-year old to Safeway. Unfortunately, the store was closed because the computers were down and would not come back up, we were told.  We could not even  use cash to purchase the dozen eggs we came to buy so we could color Easter eggs.  

Amazing.  The entire store was down because of computer problems.  Stores can no longer do cash transactions without computers.  

Though my son told the Safeway lady that I could fix it, I was more intrigued by the notion of cyperspies penetrating retail computer systems and the resulting impact.

For further related reading about the electrical grid, there’s also Wired magazine:  the informative “China and Russia vs. US Grid!”  and an extensive article  ”Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now“

Why is a local upscale grocery store still selling products that are on the FDA’s expanded list of recalled products for salmonella?  Even after I pointed out the problem? 

Likely not grubbing for profits.  I’m guessing it is confusion over the list of recalled products. That list grew fast and kept changing as supply chains were unraveled. 

The store clerk dutifully and sincerely checked the store’s printout of recalled products as though the list was the official gospel.  

Sure, the store office had a printed list.   List got old.  But the printout was etched in stone to store employees. 

Yo, FDA!  Get a better system of notifying retailers and consumers.  That bad food is still out there.

Hurray for  Jon Stewart, comedian who has emarged as the best journalist around after taking on CNBC business cable channel. 

Traditionally trained journalists have been throwing “fat pitches” — easy to hit baseballs served up to a batter to blast out of the park for a home run.  Stewart, thank goodness, asked tough questions.

I like the U.K. Guardian’s take on it:

His assault on Wall Street began in earnest with a classic Daily Show technique: a series of juxtaposed clips revealing incompetence and hypocrisy

He accused CNBC hosts and pundits of abandoning their journalistic duties and acting like cheerleaders for the market.

The interview was one of those classic television moments that crystallised the public mood in the credit crisis. Stewart articulated the anger and bewilderment of millions of Americans who now feel ripped off and afraid. He framed the question everyone wanted asked: how were the financial masters of the universe allowed to pursue their ruinous behaviour unchallenged for so long?

It caught the attention of the White House, prompted a frenzy among bloggers and soul-searching in the media, which failed to spot the biggest story of a lifetime or warn the public until it was too late. Indeed, CNBC and other supposedly objective journalists stood accused of complicity with big business, belonging to a cosy coterie that egged on company chief executives and fanned the flames of excess.

CNBC is a parade CEOs as talking press releases (in other words, our future is so bright, buy my stock and pump up the share price) as well as an “Entertainment Tonight” style of egocentric commentators whose motivation is to get their faces on TV and enable CNBC to sell ads.