Even though it probably was the least suspenseful Academy Awards ceremony in many years, I stayed up far too long to watch it. I’ll join in the bandwagon:
• I like Alec Baldwin and I like Steve Martin, but they sucked as hosts last night. They were unfunny, and almost made we wish for David Letterman.
• I’m glad for Jeff Bridges, one of the most underrated actors around. I think he was the best movie president ever in “The Contender,” and I’m sure he’s fine in “Crazy Heart,” but I feel like I’ve seen this before: old, down and out country-western singer finds love. Besides not liking country music, wasn’t that the same scenario for Robert Duvall in “Tender Mercies?” How about Clint Eastwood in “Honky-tonk Man?” Been there; done that; got a copy of the t-shirt.
• Think Mo’nique was pissed? How about her comment about being glad academy members voted for the performance, not the politics? I guess she hasn’t been going glad handing all over Hollywood and elsewhere (like Bridges, who was omnipresent over the past few weeks), and why should she (or anyone else for that matter)? The performance is the performance and if it’s good, it should get recognized, especially if it has been nominated already.
• Speaking of lobbying, the producer of Best Picture winner “The Hurt Locker” was banned from last night’s ceremony because he sent out e-mails lobbying for his film over “Avatar.” I’m 1,000% certain that he isn’t the first person to go out and lobby for an Academy Award, I think it’s just that he got caught. You need cooperation from phone companies to get records of phone calls, but e-mails leave a trail.
• I have the blu-ray of “The Hurt Locker,” but I haven’t seen it yet. I did see “Avatar” and the story was “Dances with the N’avi” but the spectacle was tremendous. And of course, director James Cameron and Hurt Locker director Katheryn Bigelow were married at one time. I’m happy for her – she made some very good films like “Near Dark” before falling out of the Hollywood mix, and I’m sure that Cameron (who has his “Titanic” Oscar) would rather have the $1 billion in ticket sales for his movie.
• I don’t wish to see the Best Documentary “The Cove” about Japanese fishermen slaughtering dolphins. It may be a more important film, but since I was at the world Premiere of “The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” and got to meet and speak with Dr. Ellsberg, I was rooting for that film.

It is completely fitting that Tim Burton’s “Alice In Wonderland” hauled in a record amount for a non-sequel this past weekend, because it was an unreal weekend for me. Let’s count the ways:
• Did the McCaskey family suddenly get the spirit of George Steinbrenner? The Bears went out on the first day of free agency and spent millions on defensive end Julius Peppers, running back Chester Taylor and tight end Brandon Manumaleuna. Peppers was the biggest name free agent available, but he takes too many downs off, and he wasn’t motivated in Carolina until his contract year. Taylor was a great pick up, a man who runs hard, plus, he comes from the division rival Vikings, weakening them. Manumaleuna is known as a blocking tight end, who should help protect Jay Cutler.
I realize that Head Coach Lovie Smith, GM Jerry Angelo, and even Team President Ted Phillips see the vultures circling over their respective jobs if things did not improve, but to get Virginia McCaskey and the rest of the Misers of the Midway, to kick out big bucks was just plain astonishing.
Yes, the Bears have no first or second round draft picks for the second consecutive year, and bold moves were necessary to save Angelo and Smith at a minimum, but how did they get the purse strings loosened? I give the McCaskey family some slack as compared with other sports owners in that, the Bears are their major asset. They’re not like Steinbrenner (ship building), or Reinsdorf (real estate), or Wirtz (liquor distributor) or most of the other owners who have significant financial interests outside of sports. And, there are a lot of McCaskeys feeding at the company trough. So it was surprising. For those three guys sakes, it had better work.
• On the other hand, the Blackhawks need to learn how to play in the second period. Ever since the Olympics, they have jumped out to a lead in the first period, given up multiple goals in the second period and tried to scramble back in the third. I know that all are pointing at the goaltending, which has been shaky, but the defense and turnovers in their own end don’t help.
• What is it with Ben Roethlisberger and women? For the second time in less than 12 months, the Pittsburgh Steeler QB has been accused of sexual assault. It seems like Roethlisberger is a good guy; he has shown up at Northwestern football games with his teammate and former NU standout Trae Essex. Unlike so many other athletes, he comes off as been rather self effacing,. Maybe it’s alcohol, but whatever it is, the man need to know that no means NO!

Many of us thought that the nutso right-wingers would be trying to target the African-American President when he was elected, but now, the “tea party” grass roots right wingers are starting to attack the government by attacking IRS offices. I guess they decided it was too hard to try and off Mr. Obama, but the average guy who works for the government, often their neighbors and friends, they’re fair game.
Many conservatives would like to see the Federal Government disappear altogether except for national security and the military. The “free market” will take care of everything else. But who builds the interstate roads that people drive on? Who tries to keep food and prescription drugs safe? Who delivers the mail, invented the Internet (not Al Gore), builds and supports museums, and the arts? And who is supposed to be the counterbalance to unbridled lawlessness by corporations?
Would the country be desegregated without government? Would women have rights with government? One of the chief flaws in the argument of Chief Justice Antonin Scalia is that we should always interpret the Constitution in the way the “framers” meant. Of course, the Founding Fathers didn’t have penicillin, atomic weapons, or Britney Spears. By Scalia’s argument (and, I believe many within the Tea Party movement), blacks like myself should still be slaves (or at least segregated and limited to the worst jobs and lives), women should go back to being barefoot and pregnant and treated like chattel by their husbands and fathers, and there would be a safe, white man in the White House.
But, we have to pay for it. People who have must share with those who don’t. Paying taxes for the benefit of us all IS patriotic, and believe me; I pay a goodly amount in taxes. But if I have to pay more so that there’s enough police to help keep my family safe; or that the roads are good; or so that kids don’t go to sleep hungry, that’s fine with me because I believe that if we take care of those who don’t have, there’s a greater likelihood that that kid won’t grow up to shoot me in a robbery attempt. Perhaps that no-longer-hungry kid will come up with a cure for cancer?
President Obama hasn’t been a complete success; I would rank him a B-/C+ grade for his term so far; but even progressives (liberals to me) should take a step back and think, isn’t this better than George W. Idiot? And would a John McCain presidency be any better?
Anyway, these Tea Party folks are just racists who are still upset that they don’t have a white man in the White House. If John Kerry, or the philanderer John Edwards, or Bozo the f#$kin’ clown was doing the same things Obama’s doing, there wouldn’t be any Tea Party movement.
These people are dangerous, and as much terrorists as Osama Bin Ladin, or Timothy McVeigh.

I have to admit that I keep hearing Prince’s song “Delirious” when I read this, and even now, as I type. One of the things I like most about sport is that you can judge someone performance all the time, real time, and, with ESPN, You Tube and other resources, you can watch an athlete perform over and over again. Which is to say that you can watch Michael Jordan dunk over someone; you can see and analyze who’s to blame in last night’s Bulls’ loss.
Athletes get paid (very well) to perform and most of the time, they can’t hide behind anyone. Miss a tackle – there it is on film. Turn over the puck in your own zone that leads to a goal – everyone sees it. Have a bad season – there are the statistics to show how bad you were.
That is, except perhaps in the “mind” of former Cub outfielder Milton Bradley. Bradley, now with Seattle, took no blame for his disastrous 2009 in an interview with the New York Times. “Two years ago, I played, and I was good,” he said. “I go to Chicago, not good. I’ve been good my whole career. So, obviously, it was something with Chicago, not me.”
Bradley places the blame on lack of communication and his perception that the Cubs wanted him to be a home run hitter. “Just no communication,” he said. “I never hit more than 22 homers in my career, and all of a sudden I get to Chicago and they expect me to hit 30. It doesn’t make sense. History tells you I’m not going to hit that many. Just a lot of things that try to make me a player I’m not.”
But, IT WAS HIM! He was the same guy that led the American League in OPS in 2008, and the Cubs needed a switch-hitter who could get on base, drive in some runs. Instead, the Cubs got an outfielder Manager Lou Pinella called “a piece of ####,” and who played like one, hitting a lowly .257 with 12 home runs and 40 RBI in 393 at-bats. Bradley was suspended for the final two weeks of the season for detrimental comments and a run-in with then hitting coach Von Joshua.
It just goes back to what I said when the Cubs signed Bradley – he’s nuts, and a clubhouse cancer, both of the predictions came true on the North Side last year. Admittedly, Chicago isn’t an easy place to play, especially for the Cubs – there’s constant media scrutiny; high expectations amid a losing history for the Cubs; and a need from all to see a hard work ethic, something that wasn’t in evidence in right field last season.
The nice thing about Milton Bradley is that in Seattle, we won’t have to see or hear about him very often; the bad thing is that we won’t have a chance to watch him implode live and in person.

Sometimes, when I look at the political spectrum in this country and look at people who disagree with what are, to me, common sense ideas about equal opportunities, taxing the rich to help everybody, universal heath care, doing something about global warming, making peace, not war, I look at the other side and think that these people have to be a bunch of slobbering Neanderthals. Well, I might be more correct than I believed…
CNN.com reported yesterday that a new study finds that political, religious and sexual behaviors are factors of intelligence.
An evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. Also, it appears that men who exhibit sexual exclusivity may also have higher IQs (this is not found in women). The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
Of course, the study downplays the IQ differences, saying that the differences are not great, 6 to 11 points, and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people. But the results are statistically significant, showing how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be. (And I will not restate the obvious issues with IQ tests.)
The reason may be counter to Darwin. Sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans’ evolutionary past, or none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.
Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid. This has not yet been bred out of people since this would have had great use in prehistoric times, when, for example, a noise in the distance may have been a signal of a threat.
The study defines “liberal” in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that the human species is becoming more liberal, since more intelligent people have fewer children, so, as we all believe, the stupid will continue to outnumber the rest of us.
I only wonder what the IQ is of the former Governor of Alaska, or the collective IQ of the tea party people? I bet it can be counted on one person’s fingers and toes.

I just sent a copy of my comic book collection and valuation to my insurance broker, and she sent me a message that it was good I had insurance and added a link to a story this week that a copy of Action Comics #1 from 1938 had sold to a collector for $1 million. This is about three times the value of the last sale. I, unfortunately, do not have one, but,as a comics fan and collector, I am ambivalent about this sale.
Why, you ask? Isn’t your collection potentially worth more? Well, yes, but it may only be that one book and others like it have appreciated (i.e., Detective Comics #27 – first appearance of Batman). why – because speculation and profit almost destroyed my favorite hobby, like it almost destroyed baseball cards and has made a mockery out of sports and celebrity autographs.
In the late 1980s, there was a “perfect storm” of popularity in the comics hobby – the Tim Burton “Batman” movie was a monster hit, and speculators were buying and selling comics like shares of stock. The comic companies did their part: multiple covers, huge print-runs, “big events” like the death of Superman hyped up for maximum sales. And, like any commodity, in the run up, people made money. Speculators who had some knowledge were able to buy low and sell high. Many comics shops did likewise, holding back “hot” comics until they were listed as “sold out” and then selling original copies for 3, 4, 5 times cover price or more. Every kid and their parents saw dollar signs with every comic sale.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. The bubble burst – people weren’t making tons of money; the market stopped hyper-appreciation, prices leveled off, and when people saw that their investments weren’t increasing anymore, they bailed, fast. A kid buying a $3 comic for $9 suddenly found no market and the price was back at $3 again. Rightfully, that kid felt like he had been conned – and he probably had. and he left the hoby, with a bad taste in his mouth. Why? Because there are about 250,000 regular comics buyers in this country. Huge print runs and multiple purchases by tons of people made those comics more than readily available, and if supply is high and demand is low, your comics is worthless.
Let’s take the death of Superman issue, shall we? There were approximately 6 million copies of this comic printed and sold. Many people bought multiple copies; some bought entire boxes full of this issue, in the expectation (I first typed hope, but that’s not the way people thought – they EXPECTED) that their comic would appreciate in value. Some naïve folks thought this would be their children’s college fund.
But, as I said above, the market tanked. People stopped buying comics, so that the number of buyers, which swelled to maybe 2-3 million in the go-go late 1980s and early 1990s, contracted back to the loyal 250,000. People who expected to profit had a ton of worthless comics that everyone already had, so sales fell more and comics looked like a rip-off. The comic companies made questionable investments during this time, and this new, high debt level, along with inability to contract print runs and even whole lines of comics fast enough, almost ended the industry entirely in the mid-to late 1990s. After years of struggle and now, popular movies have helped the companies, and the loyal 250,000 like myself, are still here.
So, the story of a comic selling for $1 million is nice – maybe my collection has shown some increase in value, but since I never plan on selling them in my lifetime, it’s a moot point. After I’m dead, the Indignant Children will make some money, but it certainly won’t keep them from having to work for a living.
I just don’t want another profusion of speculators in my hobby, and the story that one book sold for $1 million could get the greedy and the stupid thinking that they can make a killing in the comics business. I tell kids and adults who I meet who are interested in comics to get into the hobby for the right reason – because they enjoy reading the comics. Read what you enjoy; buy what you enjoy, and that way, you are already ahead.
For example, I buy a number of comics, but I’m not into the current zombie craze. Zombies are the hot thing in comics these days, and are the books that have appreciated the most over the past couple of years. But I don’t enjoy them, so I don’t read or buy them. I’m not stuck with a comic I don’t like.
I buy a comic for $4 (inflation); I read it; enjoy it. Then bag it in a plastic bag and box it up. I got my $4 worth of enjoyment, and as a bonus, I can go back and read it again. If it appreciates in value, fine. If it doesn’t, oh well. That’s the best attitude to have in my opinion.

This was the title of a Firesign Theater album of the 1970s and on the cover, there was a dais of people under pictures of John Lennon and Groucho Marx.
That said, there have been people who have said that I am a socialist, a communist, anti-American, and anti-capitalism and I’d like to prove all those people correct. With the word that the former champion in auto safety and quality, Toyota has purposefully cut corners and cost people’s lives by diluting and evading safety regulations, it is time to look at the modern corporation.
There was a book and documentary released in 2003 each called “The Corporation” that was a Canadian study of corporations, and it showed them, as entities, as immoral and unfeeling to the pledge of customers and workers. The movie and book trace this proclivity back to judicial rulings that made corporations like “people,” with similar rights and protections. Add to that the diffuse decision making structure of most corporations and difficult if not impossible attempts to document an audit trail, corporations, with their size, numbers of people working for them, and huge sums of money at their control, have eclipsed normal people, and have the government working for them, at our expense.
The book and movie’s suggestion is to roll back 170 years of jurisprudence and make new rules for corporations to make them more responsible and transparent. However, this will not happen. I have a simpler suggestion – if corporations are like people, let’s impose people-like punishment on them, and more of the Biblical variety. If a division of a corporation makes a decision to break safety laws, then world governments can take possession on these units from the parent and liquidate them. AIG was nearly brought down by one group within the company; then let the government take possession of that unit, liquidate it, and fire everyone who worked for the division. And, if there’s an audit trail, find the person who made the decision, or just make it the CEO, and prosecute them. Most states have murder statutes that include “depraved indifference,” that is, while not actually killing someone, your failure to act had a part to play in that death. We use it for parents all the time – why not for the heads of Toyota? And why stop there – if there is a financier or major shareholder like a Warren Buffet who went along with the depraved indifference, and you put them on trial, you would see corporate misdeeds falling sharply.
And last, if a company, for example Exxon Mobil, has more than 3 oil tanker accidents/spills in a 5 year period, the company is broken-up, liquidated, and all senior managers who had anything to do with lax standards and controls, get hauled up before a judge and jury. We’ve had AT&T and other giant conglomerates broken up on anti-trust grounds – why not for failure to be a good corporate citizen?
I know – you think this is unworkable, evil, sinful, unpatriotic, etc.. While I don’t believe that the death penalty stops criminals from committing murder and other capital crimes, I do believe that with the threat of liquidation, a “corporation” might think twice before cutting a few corners to save money at the potential cost of a few lives.