Brain Shuffle, 8/31/08

-- Best wishes go out to Bears cornerback Charles Tillman and his 6-month-old daughter, Tiana, on her recovery from heart transplant surgery.

-- I would heartily applaud the Republican party if they turn their convention into any type of relief effort for people hurt or displaced by Hurricane Gustav. People's lives are in the balance; let's forgot about political allegiances for now and get back to that before November.

-- Speaking of, if I'm John McCain and I just put a total unknown on my presidential ticket, I'm not sure I want her throwing the words "bridge to nowhere" out into the national consciousness every 20 minutes.

-- Before that next hop, Alfonso Soriano, remember that the last Cubs player to pull that crap (Mel Hall in 1984) got quickly traded.

-- My all-time hottie Anna Kournikova is in Maxim this month. How much longer until her career is dead enough that she has to give in to Playboy's long-standing overture?

-- Click here ... trust me, just click on it ... OK, you back yet? So, I don't pretend to have a criminal mind, but I might have called the front desk and see if they had any booze they could send up. UPDATE 9/12: Damnit, that story has fallen off their website. The deal is, some dude had a bunch of hostages in a motel room, and got caught when he sent two of them out on a beer run.

-- Should we whip out the instant replay for Aramis Ramirez' 380-foot grand slam bomb, or are we pretty sure he lit the lamp?

-- There are a lot of reasons you could rip on the LPGA for its new rule that players must be proficient in English, but here's the direction I'm going to go: You can force players to speak any language you'd like, and people still aren't going to watch women's sports.

-- Then again, the 1984 Mel Hall trade did bring Rick Sutcliffe to the Cubs, where he went 16-1 on a playoff team. On second thought, Alfonso, you just keep on hopping.

-- Confidential to MacKenzie P. of Los Angeles: Actually, I'm not going to make fun of you. I'm just not feeling it. You're 48 years old and you still need to do heroin -- that's not funny; it makes me sad. Get yourself clean, OK?

Sarah Who?

It’s pretty clear that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running-mate to appeal to the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters -- especially since Palin paid homage to Clinton and pioneer Geraldine Ferraro by name in her introduction speech Friday. What’s less clear is whether that will happen.

It’s unlikely that a pro-life, anti-gay-marriage gun nut of either gender is going to appeal to the left-wing fringe of liberal women who aren’t yet in the Obama camp. That leads to the next issue, that the choice of just any old woman could be seen as pandering.

See, the thing is, there are Republican women who people have heard of. Elizabeth Dole, for one. Some might go so far as to suggest that her service leading the Red Cross would appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who haven’t made up their minds yet. A choice like Dole would have shown an understanding of and respect for women’s accomplishments. A choice as random as Palin is akin to getting up and stage and saying "They're all pink on the inside -- just grab one."

That left-wing fringe McCain is seeking, by the way, will be more sensitive to the possibility of pandering than just about anyone. Those Clintonistas didn’t just want to have a woman in the White House. They wanted to put one there, themselves, by their own hard work, not by some ancient white-haired dude who plucked one out of nowhere and handed her the position as if she couldn't get it any other way.

But let’s say I’m wrong and McCain is right, and the choice of Palin will pick up women’s votes. So? That doesn’t mean he’ll pick up enough votes to turn the popular vote his way, and even if he did, that doesn’t mean he’ll win.

All of this brings us to the real risk of picking Palin: At that stage of the game, any move designed to pick up voters in any block other than state-by-state is an ill-conceived move.

Palin may have some appeal to working-class whites who preferred Clinton over Obama. And that may help McCain in the rust belt states of Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. But her presence on the ticket won’t help in Michigan per se as much as Mitt Romney’s would have.

Michigan, the only one of those three states that's not already leaning toward McCain, is key to McCain's chances. Assume that McCain wins Ohio and Florida. With Obama likely to turn Iowa and Colorado for 16 votes and running very competitively in Virginia for 13 more, McCain needs to win every other state that Bush won in 2004 and turn at least one blue state red. Michigan is his best and perhaps only hope.

But what do I know? Republicans over the last 40 years have made a habit of picking vice presidential candidates who are not ready to lead the country on election day, and it hasn’t hurt them much. (But don’t take my word for it; ask Dan Quayle.) In fact, the only two times I can think of that they did make a legitimate pick -- when Gerald Ford tapped Bob Dole in 1976, and 20 years later when Dole took Jack Kemp -- were two of the three races they lost in that time.

The Speech. (You Know Which One.)

It’s been nearly 24 hours, and I still haven’t decided if I like Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

I personally wanted to see a lot of the inspiring oratory of the type that launched Obama to national prominence in 2004. We saw flashes of it, mostly toward the end. But what we really saw was a lot of policy, with specific policy goals and plans to meet them, of the type that some observers said put crowds to sleep when Obama ran for smaller offices.

Still, in this context, that may have been what he needed. Policy is substance, and Obama showed plenty of it Thursday night, and it did look presidential. He answered the critics who are unsure of his qualifications, particularly on the strongest area of concern, foreign policy, and after that he laid out a case to let him lead.

This speech may well have been directed not at me -- heck, we all know I’m going to vote for him anyway -- but rather at the people who haven’t made a decision yet. I’m hoping that’s the case, and I have a good feeling that it is, because Obama does not really make wrong strategy moves.

It didn’t hurt that he was surrounded by who knows how many thousands of adoring followers -- I’m guessing it had to be at least 80,000. The normally enthusiastic chants of “Yes We Can” were magnified toward the end into a growling thunder, giving the die-hards a taste of the Obama idolatry that’s so coolly seductive.

All in all, he certainly didn’t hurt his cause on Thursday night. It’s just that I’m still wondering how much he helped it.

Yep, I Watched The Roll Call

Hillary Clinton, for the second night in a row, you were a class act.

As for the rest of you ...

Connecticut, that was closer than it needed to be. Get with the program. Democrats abroad, make up your minds. Iowa, wear a fucking necktie, for god's sake. Maine, that's about what I would've expected you to look like. Massachusetts, see Connecticut. Nevada, you've been smoking your whole life, haven't you.

Deleware, nicely done. You got to the point, and you were unanimous for Obama. Many of you states, on the other hand, should be limited to only as many words as you have votes.

And ALL of you Southern states need to learn how to elocute.

Hillary's Redemption

OK, so I take back some of those nasty things I said about Hillary Clinton.

I have to give her credit for playing the good soldier on Tuesday night in her speech at the Democratic National Convention. She said everything she needed to say to help unite the party behind Barack Obama, and she said it with grace and sincerity.

After a contentious primary season in which her legalistic maneuvers often served to engender mistrust among Obama voters, Clinton showed a different side on Tuesday. She challenged her followers to look inside themselves to put aside any feelings of bitterness or spite and do what's best for the party and the country.

She spelled out the case for Obama and against McCain. And she did it early and often in her speech. It took a very big person to throw that much support behind a one-time rival, and she should be commended.

Furthermore, when she said the words "health care" -- after she was out of the running, with nothing politically to gain from it -- I understood for the first time how deeply she feels about this issue. I still disagree with her plan to fix it, as I think it is too heavy on theory and wouldn't work in the real world, but that's just an honest difference of opinion.

And maybe her role in the health care debate could be outside of government. Not everyone can best serve through elected office. Look at Jimmy Carter, whose greatest contribution to America -- Habitat for Humanity -- had nothing to do with his time as president. Perhaps Clinton's role in health care is to continue to focus a spotlight on it until it is fixed.

One more thing I have to give her credit for: Hers was the best speech of the convention so far. Mark Warner's keynote speech was well-conceived but flat on delivery. Dennis Kucinich's fiery oratory came four years too late to make him relevant to the presidential election process. Brian Schweitzer (no relation) was entertaining and Michelle Obama gave a strong speech, but Clinton takes top billing.

At least until Thursday. We all know that Barack Obama, in front of 76,000 screaming sheep, is going to set the sky on fire at Invesco Field on Thursday. And that's fine; perhaps he'll start to slowly pick up support from the former Clinton voters he needs so badly. But that task would have been much more difficult without Clinton laying the groundwork Tuesday night.

On The Bike? Get Off The High Horse

OK, before I get lost in the Democratic Convention I just want to touch very quickly on the recent effort by Chicago police to enforce rules of the road on bicycle riders.

I am totally in favor of this idea. In fact, I wish they would actually do it.

I personally think that all rules of the road should apply equally to cyclists as to cars -- well, except maybe for the Idaho rule, where cyclists are allowed to treat stop signs as yield signs to maintain their vital momentum. And I personally do follow all the rules of the road -- well, except for the occasional wrong-way jaunt down a one-way street.

OK, so it's not so easy to follow all the rules. Still, cyclists should be making a good-faith effort, and a little enforcement wouldn't hurt us.

As someone who spends a lot of time on a bike and in a car, I can verify that everything works out best for everyone if we all play by the same rules. And I've also found that when you do play by the rules -- and especially if you're also considerate of other people's interests -- whether you're in the car or on the bike, the other side is happy to share the road with you.

I slow down and make eye contact, and drivers regularly wave me through intersections. I pull over to let faster traffic past, and I get a clear opening to the left-turn lane. I give the same treatment to cyclists when I'm driving, and I don't accidentally run them down.

Unfortunately, not everyone seems to feel the same desire to co-exist. And with renegade cyclists out there being a nuisance, the car-bike dynamic is not as seamless as it could be.

So, some healthy encouragement from an authority to keep cyclists in line would probably make life easier. But I don't think that's going to happen.

The city talked about this a few years ago, and even handed out some random tickets to wrong-way cyclists. That effort lasted about a week. The latest round of ticketing was scheduled to last all of three days, for crying out loud.

Certainly, cops have better things to worry about than making every single cyclist obey every single rule. But a round of ticketing on a semi-regular basis -- maybe three or four times a year -- for offenses that actually create dangerous situations would be highly, highly welcome.

This Dude's Abidin' By Obama's VP Pick

Joe Biden was a pretty savvy pick for a supposed political neophyte to make for his running mate.

Biden complements Obama in a lot of areas where Obama could use a little more strength. He’s been in the Senate since Obama was in grade school (1973, to be exact), offsetting concerns about Obama’s lack of experience. More importantly, Biden is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, giving the ticket a high level of crucial foreign policy expertise that many felt Obama lacks. Most importantly, Biden will appeal to working-class whites who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary by the lunch-bucketful.

Biden may be official a Senator from Deleware, but he’s got strong ties to Pennsylvania, a state that Obama needs to win and one that was already leaning his way. This pick should put it solidly in Obama’s camp, and it could help in other rust-belt states such as Ohio and Indiana.

All of these were known qualities before Biden’s speech in Springfield yesterday. What was unexpected is that he came out swinging with the type of attacks from which Obama has recused himself. Talking about the economic worries typical Americans are likely to be discussing at their kitchen tables, Biden quipped, “All John McCain has to worry about is which of his seven kitchen tables to sit at,” in a reference to McCain and his wife’s real-estate holdings. It was a bit of a cheap shot, but it certainly resonated with the blue-collar voters Biden is supposed to attract. (And let’s face it, it was a good line.)

As someone with a strong journalistic background, I’m not crazy about the 1988 plagiarism charges against Biden. But even I can recognize that if that’s the worst thing you can dig up on a guy after 36 years in the Senate, he’s pretty clean.

After all, 20 years ago John McCain was taking campaign contributions and free vacations from the guys who were tanking the Savings and Loan industry. (Don’t believe me? I looked it up.) Undercutting the U.S. economy vs. ripping off a couple lines from guys who would have given them away willingly: I’m thinking the former did a little more lasting damage.

I hear there are still a few malcontents out there in the Hillary Clinton camp who are angry that Clinton was never seriously considered. These people need a reality check. That has nothing to do with any qualifications that Clinton might have; it’s just that the rest of the world figured out a long time ago that Obama and Clinton flat-out won’t work together.

Deep down, there is a part of me that was really hoping Obama would pick a woman to show that the backlash against Clinton is not in any way a backlash against womankind. I thought Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) would have been an outstanding choice, with her 16 years in the Senate, her foreign-relations experience and her appeal to Jews, another constituency that heavily leaned toward Clinton. But for some reason she never got any consideration. Kathleen Sebelius was the only woman to get serious speculation as a running mate, but the Kansas governor probably appeals to too many of the same constituencies as Obama to have helped the ticket.

It doesn’t really matter, though. Some women -- not many, but some -- would have felt slighted more by the choice of a woman other than Clinton than they would have by the choice of a man. These are the women who will forever be convinced that Clinton was rejected because certain men are somehow “threatened” by her, even though most of us have voted for any number of women for all kinds of political offices. (I wonder if these are the same women who assume that men are taking a pass on them en masse because men are supposedly “afraid of commitment,” not because these particular women are “completely bat-shit insane,” but I don’t pretend to understand women.)

Now, where was I? Ah yes … Joe Biden …

Solid choice. It shows that while Obama intends to lead by his own principles, he’s open enough to be guided by the voice of experience.

It will be interesting to see if McCain makes an equally compelling choice. Mitt Romney is out there, and could throw a wrench into the Democrats’ plans to win Michigan. Stay tuned; this could be a race all the way down to the wire.

Brain Shuffle, 8/24/08

-- Michael Phelps' mother, Deborah, has been talking about how the famous swimmer may have benefitted from having ADD as a kid. Of course I'm very glad for Phelps, but I've always believed that "attention-deficit disorder" is just a fancy word for "being a kid." "He could always focus on things he was passionate about," Deborah said on the radio the other day. Hey, that's great. You know who else can do that? EVERYBODY! That's still no reason to not smack your kid just because they don't want to do homework.

-- Hungary 1956. Czechoslovakia 1968. Georgia 2008. Russia hadn't ever changed; they were just waiting for the right Olympics/American election cycle to turn back into
Russia when nobody was watching.

-- Miller Lite is reportedly bringing back its "Great Taste ... Less Filling" slogan. I hope they also bring back the "All we need is one pin, Rodney" ad from the '80s, even though the footage is ancient and the main character is dead. But hell, Victory Auto Wreckers is still airing the same spot it was using circa 1978 (check out the Packard-looking thing in the junkyard), and that godawful Sun Setter ad must have been shot around 1991, so why not bring back a commercial that's actually good?

-- Here's how bad the Cubs' 13-5 loss to the Washington Nationals on Friday was: Coming into that game, the Nationals had played 29 3-game series this season, and failed to score a total of 13 runs for the series in 22 of them.

-- Two New York high school students used a DNA lab to prove that as much as 25 percent of sushi is actually made from much cheaper fish than advertised, which may explain why you never see any stray tilapia around Asian restaurants.

-- I shouldn't even have to tell people this, but if you're going to stand on the escalator just stand to one side and let other people pass.

-- See, the beauty of the escalator is not that it can get you where you're going with no effort on your part; the beauty is that for the same amount of effort it can get you where you're going in less time.

-- OK, so that thing in the photos wasn't really bigfoot. But isn't it just as exciting that we finally have definitive proof of the existence of rubber gorillas?

-- Confidential to Gary G., formerly of Great Britain: Yeah, try Thailand. It's pretty much impossible to find a way to indulge your deviant sexual preferences there.

I'm Too Tired To Think Of A Headline. This One's About The Bears.

So the Bears have named a startng quarterback. And they even picked the right one in Kyle Orton. Now all they have to do is find a running back, a couple of receivers, an entire offensive line and, for some reason, 11 guys who can tackle on defense.

The O-line is probably the most dire need, but the defense is the most disturbing. This is, after all, basically the same crew the carried the team to the Super Bowl two years ago. What happened? I know Brian Urlacher is starting to show his mileage, but not everybody got old in two measly years.

It's true that they mostly tightened up in the red zone on Thursday night (when they weren't drawing flags, that is), but they also gave up some big plays and long drives to let the 49ers get there. Even in the preseason, this is not an encouraging sign.

At first glance it would seem that the Bears also need a kick returner who can hold onto the ball, as Danielle Manning and Holy Cross High School alum Garrett Wolfe both had issues.

But I think the Bears will be set at kick returner. No matter what Joe Buck and Troy Aikman said, I doubt very much that the Bears are looking to give Devin Hester help; I'm guessing they're just trying to show some decoys before the games that count. (Speaking of ... Joe Buck and Troy Aikman calling a Bears-49ers game? Did the other 30 NFL teams fold when I wasn't looking, or did they just want some deep-dish pizza?)

The only downside of putting so much emphasis on the kick return game is that it gave Kyle Orton a lot of short fields, which is bad because we didn't really get a chance to see what he could do. He did have a couple touchdown passes, though, and seemed to run the offense competently, at least from what I saw in the first half before flipping over to the top 20 from E!'s 101 Most Memorable Saturday Night Live Moments (and I don't know how you don't put Jesse Jackson reading Dr. Suess in the the top 10, but I'll leave that one for another day).

Bottom line: If this team wins fewer than eight games, it will be the fault of the defense, not Kyle Orton.

A Dusty Collection Of Sorry Former Cubs

Every time the Cubs play Cincinnati this year, I'm amazed anew at how former genius Dusty Baker seems to be trying to reassemble the team that got progressively worse every year under his stewardship on the North Side.

The list of former Baker Cubs currently on the Reds' roster isn't long -- Corey Patterson, Paul Bako, Jerry Hairston and Kent Mercker -- but there are some key names on that list. (For the record, former Cub David Weather is also on the Reds, but his Chicago tenure pre-dates the Baker era.)

Take Patterson. He, perhaps more than anyone, symbolizes Baker's failings, as Dusty stuck with the much-hyped Patterson in Chicago long after his .190 average in September of 2004 helped sink the team's playoff chances that year.

We're talking about a guy who hasn't even had the career of his erstwhile stablemate Gary Matthews Jr. But that didn't stop Baker from starting Patterson in center field on freaking Opening Day for the 2008 Reds. (I looked it up.)

Patterson patrolled the ground in between Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. Which of these things is not like the others? Why, the only one who survived the Reds' recent trade frenzy, of course, although that's not really the differentiating factor.

Bako and Hairston stand out, too. In Bako's case it's because he's what passes for an everyday catcher in Cincinnati even though he was too old five years ago to play the same role for the 2003 playoff Cubs. Hairston had the misfortune of being the Cubs' key acquisition in the trade that sent away Sammy Sosa before the 2005 season (although, in fairness, Hairston arguably had a better year than Sosa in '05.)

But what do you expect? The only good decision Baker ever made was where to bat his superhuman slugger -- Barry Bonds in San Francisco, Sosa in Chicago. Or didn't you notice how average he became after the steroid era ended?

Obviously, roster decisions are not entirely at Baker's discretion. But I can pretty much guarantee that these roster decisions were his. After all, whoever had the savvy to get two all-star-caliber young pitchers for Josh Hamilton, and the stones to deal sentimental favorite Griffey, did not put Bako and Mercker on the team.

And by the way, in case there are any nattering nabobs out there, I'm aware that the 2004 Cubs actually won one more game in the regular season that the 2003 squad. I stand by my assessment that the Cubs got progressively worse every year under Baker. There are many ways to qualify 2003 as a more successful season than '04, not the least of which is that the Cubs advanced to the NLCS that year. And we're not going to talk about what happened when they got there.

Brain Shuffle, 8/17/08

-- It's awfully nice and everything for Barack Obama to allow Hillary Clinton's name to be in official contention at the Democratic primary, which is something candidates just don't do anymore, but I can't help but suspect it's yet another Clinton trick.

-- Congress is considering a ban on menthol cigarettes because critics claim they're targetted at blacks. They should ban menthols because the mix of minty menthol and earthy tobacco is about as appealing as chocolate-frosted mud.

-- Meanwhile, Special Olympics and other organizations for the intellectually disabled are upset with the makers of the film Tropic Thunder because of its excessive use of the term "retard," and they're calling for a national boycott of the movie. I had kind of thought that was going to happen organically.

-- I think the thing that disturbs me most about the Joyce Brennan "I-Put-My-Face-On-Worldwide-TV-To-Clone-My-Dead-Dog-Booger-Even-Though-I'm-Wanted-In-
Britain-In-a-30-year-old-Kidnapping-And-Sex-Case-And-It-Turns-Out-I'm-Also-Wanted-
In-A-Recent-Tennessee-Burglary-To-Buy-A-Leg-For-A-Horse" McKinney case is that she named her dog Booger.

-- It always makes me feel old when Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer pitch against each other, as they did Friday night in San Diego. Why? Because I was in high school when those two dinosaurs came up with the Cubs, as opposed to, say, grown adults who weren't even born yet.

-- People are dropping dead left and right lately. First it was Bernie Mac, who I commemorated by watching Bad Santa on Comedy Central this weekend, and then it was Issac Hayes, so now we will never again hear that classic song, "Simultaneous" (as in "simultaneous lovin' "). Unless someone shows me how to embed an MP3 file into my blog, of course.

-- Nancy Grace is the CNN version of Jerry Springer.

-- Confidential to Alfonso S. in Wrigleyville: I know it's scary when the fat man yells at you, but honestly, for $17 million a year you'd better leg out that double.

-- Finally, anyone who's for, against, or undecided on the environment in general and global warming in particular should read Joel Achenbach's piece in the Washington Post. No matter what you believe, you'll see in great detail exactly why you're wrong, wrong, wrong!

Singapore Part II: Culture

SINGAPORE -- Although Singapore is a tropical city very close to the equator, it’s also a perfectly modern city with high-rise buildings and shopping malls everywhere.

In Singapore, where the per-capita wealth is slightly higher than in the U.S., shopping is the national pastime. My hotel was interconnected with one of the largest malls on the island, and it was pretty well packed every day of the week, any time of day from about 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

I’m not big into shopping, but I did walk through a few stores to see if their were deals available, as the Singapore dollar is worth about 70 percent of the U.S. dollar. In equalized currency, products in Singapore were a little less, but only by about 10 to 20 percent. You certainly wouldn’t make back the cost of your airfare by coming here to shop.

The thing that actually caught my eye in these stores was a female mannequin. It stood out because it was so thin, even more so than mannequins in the U.S. I began to wonder if S’porean retailers are subject to American-style criticisms about unattainable body images, until I noticed something that was entirely unlike the U.S. experience: The women shopping were the same size as the mannequins. (Men are smaller than their U.S. counterparts, too; I felt really tall the whole time I was here.) I got the impression that if women here weighed 280 pounds, shopkeeps would simply trot out size-18 dummies and their customers would still see themselves in their clothes.

Speaking of things that are better than in the U.S. (uh, by which I mean retail shopping, not women), the trains here beat the heck out of the CTA. They’re clean, they’re quick, and the seats are lined up with backs to the wall to open up more standing space. And the cars are open-ended, giving the illusion that the train is just one long car. But what I really liked is that in addition to a name, each stop was given a sequential number, so even a first-time rider could tell that NS15 Yio Chu Kang is exactly 10 stops from NS25 City Hall on the North-South line.

Like everything else, the signs in the stations are written in four languages. The official language of Singapore is English, owing to its long history as a British colony, but everything is also written in Mandarin Chinese, Malay and some other language that I believe is spoken in parts of India. That would stand to reason, as Chinese, Malaysians and Indians seem to be the largest ethnic groups.

Everyone mixes pretty well, though you have to wonder if that’s by choice or because of a government that can be eerily restrictive. Banning guns is all fine and well, but banning gum -- as in chewing gum, which is illegal for Singapore residents to possess as an anti-litter measure -- is quite another matter.

One of my American co-workers, who’s on a six-month rotation here, lamented upon my arrival that she forgot to ask me to bring her some gum. I asked the locals if the post office would be likely to examine a package for contraband if I sent her one from the U.S., and they said sure enough. No gum for Rachel!

It’s also illegal to have a satellite dish because you could use it to pick up TV signals from outside of Singapore, where TV is carefully edited to remove most sexual references. Legal brothels and newspaper ads to improve your “sexy cleavage” don’t bother these people, but words like “mistress” broadcast over the air do. I guess it has something to do with the captive audience on TV.

The locals seem pretty happy and don’t mind the government regulations, but it’s a level of intrusion that I certainly hope is never tolerated in the United States.

Singapore Part I: Attractions

SINGAPORE -- The most important thing you need to know about Singapore is that I saw monkeys.

Not in a zoo, not behind glass, just hanging out in the middle of the road. Parts of Singapore, it turns out, have monkeys the way that Chicago has squirrels, taking up residence by the reservoir, effortlessly traipsing across barbed wire fences and sneaking into the prime housing in that area to steal fruit.

My tour guide seemed to think I was slightly cracked as I kept gasping every time I saw one, and finally she explained that they’re somewhat of a nuisance. I guess I can no longer make fun of warm-weather folks who come to Chicago and gush about how beautiful a road-gray, eight-foot-high snowbank is.

Unfortunately, that was about the only wildlife I saw here, where I spent a week for work in early August. But I’m told that it is out there. Singapore is, after all, a country/state/city built in a rain forest, and it supports a jungle ecology.

Locals told me that the main attraction is the midnight safari, a open-air wildlife walk that begins each night after sundown. No cages, no fences; it’s you and the animals, in the dark. Apparently a good time is had by all and nothing bad ever happens, but I didn’t get to find out. The one free night I had to check out the safari was rainy, and even if I was adventurous enough to risk getting caught in a monsoon I figured the animals weren’t.

The next day was my last one in Singapore, so I went to a nature preserve in a last-ditch attempt to see some jungle animals. Because I don’t think like a jungle person, I made the rookie mistake of going in the middle of the day, which is also the hottest part and therefore the part in which the animals are all sleeping. No more monkeys for Kevin!

The attraction that’s impossible to miss is the Singapore Flyer, a 540-foot-tall Ferris wheel. Singapore would like the Flyer, which opened this year, to be its signature landmark. It’s too early to tell if the rest of the world will adopt it, but Singapore seems pretty proud: Two out of two native S’poreans casually mentioned, within one minute of me saying “Singapore Flyer,” that it’s taller than London’s Flyer.

The distinction is important because people who actually follow these things would tell you neither ride is truly a Ferris wheel, but rather an “observation wheel”. They have an argument. Although the ride is a big wheel with carriages that circulate to the top and back, there are some key differences. But on the Flyer, the bus-sized, glass-enclosed carriages are fixed -- rather than free-swinging -- and occupants are treated to a safe, smooth trip. And some outstanding photo opportunities.

Singapore also has an outdoor theater in which the stage floats on the bay; a cleverly laid one Formula One racetrack; and a casino in the building stage. Still, all of these things are only worth seeing if you’re already here; nothing seemed to be worth traveling 10,000 miles for in and of itself. It’s all very nice, but the bottom line on Singapore is that you’ll have a great time if you have some other reason to go.

The Eighth Wonder Of The World, This Guy Isn't

First of all, I just want to say it feels so nice to finally start blogging about this incredible Cubs team. I was never going to be able to maintain a blog strictly about Chicago sports, but I think these postings are the most delicious for me.

That said, this post really isn’t about this incredible Cubs team and is only weakly connected to the Chicago sports at all. The deal is, I got back in town just in time for the always contentious Cubs-Cardinals series, which gives me a chance for a rip on Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa that I’ve been meaning to make for a long time.

My late friend Jeff Ponczak, a Daily Illini legend, used to go ape-scat whenever he heard baseball announcers refer to LaRussa, a former White Sox manager (see? there’s the weak connection) as a genius. The real reason Ponz got so irate is that he was a die-hard Sox fan and therefore felt jilted that LaRussa moved on to win a World Series in Oakland, but the purported reasons he offered actually had a lot of merit.

His most vociferous objection was that LaRussa’s use of his pitcher in the eighth spot of the lineup was flat-out stupid, and I cannot agree more.

LaRussa’s reasoning is that this system allows him to ensure his best hitter will bat in the first inning, by hitting him third, and then function as a cleanup hitter in later innings because he will have three legitimate hitters in front of him. This “logic,” for lack of a better word, completely misses the point. If hitters are getting on in front of the best hitter, he will come up in the first inning from the cleanup spot, and if no one’s getting on in front of him, his only RBI opportunity is to hit a solo home run, which counts the same whether it comes with two outs in the first or none in the second.

So all you accomplish by moving up the pitcher is to move your worst hitter up in the lineup, and move a leadoff-quality hitter to the very bottom.

This is not the only objection to the overrating of LaRussa. In fact, Sunday night’s Cubs-Cardinals game gave a shining example of how his “genius” is actually just LaRussa outsmarting himself.

With runs at a premium, the Cubs had Alfonso Soriano at third and Derrek Lee at bat with one out in the sixth. LaRussa pulled his infield halfway in, causing barely literate announcer Joe Morgan to gush so hard about how clever this strategy is that he actually managed to express in complete sentences that the intent is to cause a runner uncertainty as to whether to run on a ground ball (hint: don’t). After all that, Lee just ripped a line drive through the spot where the shortstop had been standing, and Soriano put the Cubs up 2-0.

Of course, if the infield had been a normal depth, Lee would have been likely to try to poke a ground ball somewhere. But it’s a lot harder to score from third on an infield grounder anywhere than it is on a sharp single. LaRussa may be one of those people who has a pathological need to show everyone that he’s smarter than the conventional wisdom, even though anyone who thinks he is, is by that very notion a fool.

Brain Shuffle, 8/10/08 -- Pan Asian Edition

-- The sodomy charge against Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim may or may not be politically motivated, but one thing's for sure: Somebody's getting screwed in a bad way.

-- Seems like China remembered to ban everything except cyclones leading up to the Olympics.

-- Seriously, though, from the bits and pieces I saw of the opening ceremonies while spending a solid 24 straight hours either in airports or on planes, it was pretty impressive. I still need to see footage of the dancers on the globe; if anyone knows where to find it please email me.

-- It took me about three days to get the pun in Out of the Pan, the name of a French crepe shop in Singapore.

-- We are missing out on a whole new way of thinking about Sudoku on this side of the Pacific. In Asia, the game has a fourth element: Shaded 3x3 grids interlocking with the nine standard 3x3 grids, which also must have each number appearing only once. Somewhat counterintuitively, it actually makes the game easier, because there are more ways to disqualify a given number from a given square.

-- Does anyone know where I can get lime juice in the U.S.?

-- That 14-hour nonstop flight from Hong Kong to Chicago, the longest nonstop in the world, is about as grueling as it sounds, even in business class. When I got off the plane I really felt like I needed to get stretched out, by which I mean have one person take both my arms and another person take both my legs, and pull in opposite directions, for a good long while. But on the bright side, the extreme jet lag I suffered had me watching Olympic coverage at some odd hours, which is the bright side because now I can say from a point of knowledge that the seven-meter penalty really is the most exciting play in all of handball.

-- Look for more postings soon from Singapore! I have a lot of good stuff to say about it.

Brain Shuffle, 8/3/08

-- Very sorry to hear about Robert Novak's brain tumor, so much so that I actually removed a snide comment about him from last week's Brain Shuffle. I met Novak a couple times in college, when he came to visit The Daily Illini, the newspaper at the University of Illinois where he had worked many years before I did. He may be a Republican pawn and I may disagree wholly with his politics, but he's still a D.I.'er.

-- Umm ... I get that Ken Griffey Jr. is a future Hall of Famer, but I'm not convinced that picking up a 38-year-old center fielder made of glass will improve the White Sox's ballooning ERA.

-- Kyle Farnsworth for Ivan Rodriguez. Why didn't the Cubs think of that in 2003?

-- I hear that John McCain opened up negative campaign season by trying to analogize Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Now we know why he's always called on opponents to forego negative campaigning.

--British Gas announced profits of nearly 1 billion pounds for the first half of the year this week, one day after announcing a 35 percent price hike that will threaten some people's ability to heat their homes, particularly elderly on a pension. Just in case you thought the Brits weren't Americanized.

-- I wrote a song for Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to make them feel better:

Baby, if you've ever wondered
Wondered whatever became of me
I lost at No. 1 in Cincinatti
Cincinatti Masters, ATP

Fear And Loathing In Basingstoke

BASINGSTOKE, England -- It turned out that in my three days in England, I didn't see much outside of the inside of a conference room at the Motorola office here.

But, with a walk around town and a trip to a proper English pub, I did manage to get a healthy dose of local flavor.

What really struck me is how incredibly polite and cheerful everyone is. They'll gladly stop what they're doing to answer any question; they call you "brilliant" for any little thing you do well, even something as simple as having your credit card ready at the hotel check-in.

At first it was flattering, especially the “brilliant” part. Then, it quickly grew stale, especially the “brilliant” part. Not because it was cloying (I was OK with that) but because it made me feel too much pressure to act the same. We all know that at some point I'm going to revert to my true self and be a total -- well, let’s just say "American," although I actually had another a-word in mind -- and such a display would be greatly maginified in this company.

Perhaps the worst part of the incessant pleasantry was that everyone is far too nice to tell everyone else how dreadfully awful their food is. It's hard to understand why it's so bad; the English have the same basic ingredients as us but seem to have been extremely innovative in completely fucking them up. No amount of honey is going to save a pudding made of rice, people. “Back bacon” is sub-ham, for crying out loud. And everything is slathered in this mysterious white goop that I suppose more than anything resembles mayonnaise, but brother, it ain't mayonnaise. Or if it is, everyone's too polite to tell everyone else that they appear to have spilled a giant vat of cream of tartar in their mayo.

On the plus side, though, at the prices they charge for somewhat modest-size portions, you can really drop quite a number of pounds in no time. (Sorry, little British humor there. Very little, in fact.)

All kidding aside, in many ways England is much like the U.S., or at least what the U.S. would be like if everyone spoke with a mouth full of molasses and we measured our currency in backwards question marks. There are just minor differences -- the pubs have no stools at the bar itself; if you're not at a table you stand and drink your pint. The hotel room clock was on the TV instead of the radio; for the first two days I hadn't the foggiest what time it was.

Speaking of foggy, I was struck that the weather wasn't. Despite several dire reports of rain and fog and general dreariness at all times in Britain, throughout my stay the temperature was balmy and the sunshine was -- well, for lack of a better word, brilliant. I even teased some of the local birds that the myth of the famously bad weather is just a ruse to keep England for the English: “Oh, don’t bother coming here today, love. It’s terribly rainy. We couldn’t have you visiting on such a nasty day. Right, go on back home to the States, then.”

All things considered, I think it was a win that I lasted three whole days in England without once supergluing myself to the prime minister. Next stop on Kevin's Motorola World Tour is Singapore, where I'm actually sitting as I hit publish. (I wrote some of this in England and most of it on a plane high above several countries that end in "-stan".) I'll be here a week and hope to post a couple times, along with some decent pictures, assuming of course that I see more than the inside of a conference room on this leg.

An American View Of This Curiosity Known As Cricket

Walking through the town park on a typically glorious British evening, I caught a glimpse of one of those minor differences between the U.S. and the rest of the English-speaking world: the game of cricket. It was being played by four young children, but as it was my first first-hand experience with the game, I was understandably interested to see how it transpired at any level.

Apparently the way this works is, when the batsman makes contact with the ball, no matter what else is happening, he frantically runs back and forth between the little girl playing bowler and the little girl manning the other wicket. Not even in a circle, mind you -- just back and forth. So it's like an even more pointless version of baseball, at least until they all hit puberty.