Saucyman: 300th Post - Happy Blogtenial Saucyman

Friday, March 26, 2010

300th Post - Happy Blogtenial Saucyman

Last weekend, my friend Trudy, spent fighting a forest fire in the North woods. I spent the weekend lost in my own thoughts, even spending part of my time contemplating the immediacy of fighting a fire. Trudy is out there with a hose, making instinctual, reactive choices of where and how to knock down the flame. If I found myself in a similar situation, I might think of fire as a trope, meditate the thin line between the destructive and productive nature of fire and spend at least a little time affirming that yes, orange is my favorite color, not quite flame orange, even though it would make a great color for a shirt.

Mine is a contemplative life and these are some of the things I have been thinking about lately….

FOMP are vindicated: Friends/Followers Of Michael Pollan can now upgrade their views on corn syrup from opinion to fact - A Princeton study has found that rats, nay lab rats, who have access to corn syrup gained more weight than rats who had access to sugar even when their caloric intake was the same. At some point in the future, this trigger might explain how people can gain weight slurping diet soda.

Like fighting a forest fire, the productivity of a hive doesn’t leave much time for the quiet life of reflection. Last week, the hive-like NY City made beekeeping and hives a legalized activity. Today the NY Times opened its pages to an editorial to a couple of bee experts. Unlike past analysis about what is being called 'colony collapse; has been a tad hysterical – cell phone towers jamming the bees ‘radar’, this piece is sober and even-handed. It is worth the 5 minutes and can be read here.

Red light, green light, EU Stop. The European Union was doing its own bit of consideration – thinking about labeling food packages with a stop light system of coding to let consumers understand the relative healthfuliness of packaged food. Unfortunately, it was an EU set of regulations, so diet soda = green light, apple juice = red (due to calories). The official Saucyline is that individual foods are neither good nor bad, rather overall diets are what should be monitored for health. When regulators and nutritionist try to regulate eating habits one food at a time it makes veins on my forehead pop-out and I sign in relief that the regs were defeated. That feeling of victory is offset by the vigorous campaign funded in both the EU and the US to fight the adoption of these rules. It makes me nervous to side with Chamber of Commerce and trade industry types. Plus I really like visual information, a stop light system of coding would be like having The USA Today on every box of food.

Not really worth the read because nothing is changing but more info by following this link.

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Basketball

Since the lockout ended, I have been largely silent about the great sport of basketball. Despite Brandon Roy retiring, despite my beloved Blazer’s sprint out of the blocks to a really good start, despite my home team playing a style of basketball than can no longer be described as Van Gundying (Jeff) up the sport’s fluidity.

I don’t know, some interesting developments transpired: During the lockout, analysts and beat writers, the very people who possibly think about professional basketball more than I do, had a light bulb go on over their collective heads and across the league they discovered what everyone else pretty much already knew, NBA Commissioner David Stern is a dick. Over the last decade Stern forced bankrupt municipalities to build new stadiums for billionaires’ new play thing, this heavy handed behavior garnered nothing but praise. The writers sighed and thought eh, “we live in the suburbs, we write for suburban middle managers, our values are if anything anti-urban” - with all the weight that word carries. But needlessly locking out players jeopardizing their tenuous employment in publishing, well that is something that we might complain about except they hate the players more - Oh the conflict.

But mostly I can’t get excited about any team helmed by Nate McMillan. We’ll make the playoffs with a pretty good but not best record, maybe get home court advantage in the first round and then fail to advance. This is true until McMillan proves otherwise, 11 years a coach out of the first round once - this record while coaching some pretty good but not great teams. Along the way Nate will overplay star forwards LaMarcus Aldridge and Gerald Wallace so there is nothing in the tank come playoff time and risk their health. And yo-yo Nicholas Batum’s minutes so the young player becomes a head case instead of developing into a consistent contributor.

So a predictable finish is part of the my own jejune response to the return of the sport of kings (not really, that's horse racing) maybe it's the sweet science (damnit google says that's boxing). My attitude goes deeper than a finish more predictable than one of McMillan's earth toned, triple pleated suits, if the lockout exposed a fault line in NBA coverage it's that broadcasters and writers are now PR agents for the teams - so who is left to advocate for the fan - thank goodness for blogs and the posting cyborg that is named Henry Abbott.

2nd round or bust