Rob Schneider responded to a passing lament by writer Patrick Goldstein (who said it was sad studios had passed on the chance to finance many of last year’s best picture nominees while they spent money freely on movies like a Duece Bigalow sequel) by placing huge ads attacking Goldstein, saying he had not won any awards for his writing (which turns out, as Ebert notes, to not be true).

[…]

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” while passing on the opportunity to participate in “Million Dollar Baby,” “Ray,” “The Aviator,” “Sideways” and “Finding Neverland.” As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

I believe that a shadowy worldwide organization exists to ensure that no matter where I live or even visit for a while) there will be a small, yippy dog nearby to make sure I don’t get any peace. I could set up shop in a cave in the remotest Urals, pack in supplies for a couple years, seal the entrance, and they’d breed a burrowing corgi that could track my scent through a mile of rock.

What possible reason do owners have for owning these dogs, and keeping them around when they’re so clearly unhappy? “Oh, Popper’s only barking for the third straight day because he loves you, Billy. Now let me put these earplugs back in.”

I’m being petty.

So over at USSM, we’ve decided to turn the other cheek mostly and let poor coverage of the local team go unchecked. Many readers thought attacking coverage was beneath us and made us look like resentful, petty jerks more interested in scoring points and acting superior. I had hoped that by being sharply critical of the disappointing coverage we’d be able to get some improvments made. That wasn’t happening, so I ceded the argument.

From today’s Mariner mailbag, on MLB.com, by Jim Street:

I am curious about the exact rules of the DH. Is it required that AL teams use one, or can they have the pitcher hit if they wanted? I don’t see why they would want to, just curious. Also, if the DH is used, does it have to be for the pitcher, or could the DH for a position player and let the pitcher hit? — Travis J., Hillsboro, Ore.

The designated hitter rule, adopted by the AL in 1974, allows the manager to put a hitter in the lineup in place of the pitcher. Although nothing would prevent the manager from using the DH for a position player and letting the pitcher hit, that would mean the defense would have only eight players on the field, which would not be a good idea.

In order:
The designated hitter rule, adopted by the AL in 1974,

Yes.

allows the manager to put a hitter in the lineup in place of the pitcher.

Yes

Although nothing would prevent the manager from using the DH for a position player and letting the pitcher hit,

What? No. This is in the rules: 6.10 (b).

(b) The Rule provides as follows: A hitter may be designated to bat for the starting pitcher and all subsequent pitchers in any game without otherwise affecting the status of the pitcher(s) in the game. A Designated Hitter for the pitcher must be selected prior to the game and must be included in the lineup cards presented to the Umpire in Chief.

Has to be the pitcher. Has to be.

that would mean the defense would have only eight players on the field, which would not be a good idea.

Now this totally goes off the rails. Even in leagues where you can have a DH for the shortstop (I know some prep leagues do this, for instance) you still have nine fielders. The shortstop doesn’t bat, just like a pitcher doesn’t bat. Why would DHing for a fielder mean you only got eight players? Does he take a fielder’s slot but not field? Would the DH bat twice in a nine-man lineup, or would the lineup drop to eight?

What’s disappointing about this is that I know Street must know this. He can’t not know it. He’s been writing about baseball forever. He was the Bay Area president of the BaseBall Writer’s Association of America (BBWAA) in 1980. I’ve been reading his bylines on stuff in the Sporting News and Baseball Weekly since I could read them. Unless there’s another Jim Street. I don’t understand how this gets up, and I don’t understand what he was trying to say in the last bit at all.

Maybe there’s another Jim Street, and all this time I’ve just thought it was one writer with a long and productive career.

Book’s 75% in the bag. Hot cha cha.

Why is the electronically added sound of a bleep so much louder than the rest of the soundtrack? My wife watches a lot of random trash on TV for no reason while she’s doing other stuff, and even when I can’t hear anything else, the sound of bleeping bleepedy bleeps cuts through the house like a sharp knife.

It makes the program more jarring, which likely the intention. It doesn’t make it any edgier, though, and no one watches a program because it has a lot of bleeped-out swearing. All it does is jangle my nerves down the hall as I try and get something productive done.

and normally, find dream conversations dumb. But last night after I was up way too late tinkering with the U.S.S. Mariner, I had a long and involved dream about the site being entirely in French. I took high school French and remember little, but on waking, I looked up what little fragments I remember from the dream and it looks like I managed to dream in correct French.

I have no idea what that means, but the possibility that there’s a hidden ocean of languages in my head disturbs and intrigues me. Could I go to Germany, hit my head with a mallet, and suddenly go back to being barely conversationally fluent, which was the height of my fluency gained from a year of brutal college German courses?

Water on Mars found. And lots of it. The European Space Agency has some good stuff too.

Also, there’s a 10th planet in the solar system, larger than Pluto. Space.com, elsewhere.

Water on Mars is a profound and important discovery. The existence of water’s long been suspected. In particular, the ESA may have found a frozen sea buried deep in the crust, and it’s thought there are large reserves of water buried in the poles. This discovery — persistent standing frozen water on the surface means we’re almost certain to find evidence that there has been life on Mars, and with standing water, chances skyrocket that we’re going to find life hanging around Mars right now, chilling. So to speak.

I know too much about the Seattle Mariners. One of the things in-depth knowledge does, though, is teach you that you shouldn’t really trust anything you read. Because when you read something like this in an ESPN.com article on overpaid players:

2. Bret Boone (2B, Twins, $9,000,000)
We would have had more sympathy for Boone when he was released by the Mariners if he weren’t blowing his nose with piles of C-notes. Boone, the highest-paid second baseman in baseball — by $1.5 million — was hitting .234 with seven homers and 34 RBI when Seattle let him go. When the Twins picked him up (Seattle is still picking up his paycheck), Minnesota GM Terry Ryan said, “This is a high-reward, low-risk situation. I don’t think there’s any downside.” Ah, but there is: Just playing Boone is a downside. He’s hitting and slugging below the Mendoza line for the Twins.

Boone was traded, not released. The Twins traded for him (and the M’s are paying for much of his remaining salary) offering the ever-popular PTBNL. It’s not that important to the point, but for a writer to make repeated references to something that didn’t happen…

It’s a transaction. It’s soooo easy to look up. And if ESPN and whoever edited this can’t get a fact — a fact in the first line of the paragraph — right, how seriously should I take their football coverage (for instance), where I wouldn’t catch those kind of errors?

Every once in a while, I hear about some co-worker of mine who I knew or worked with, and found to be bad at their jobs — often, really bad, to the point where I felt they should have pursued other work, like underwater salvage diver — gets hired somewhere for some massive amount of money. Sometimes they’re great interviewees, and some people do well by hopping from job to job, but more than anything else, it’s a demonstration that the world is not a meritocracy, and we are all not rewarded according to our efforts.

And it’s not just that. It’s also that I know people who do good work, but who might not be good in interviews, or who aren’t good at finding and going after jobs, who would be better at those jobs. It’s unjust. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

My last post raises the question — who is the greatest athlete, and why isn’t Lance it?

First off, I agree with those who’d argue that it’s too hard to define those criteria. And yet, depending on what you set the standard at, Armstrong’s often a fine candidate.

If greatest athlete means the greatest achiever at any athletic event, Armstrong’s seven wins in the Tour de France stand with any other athlete, ever.

If greatest athlete means the most well-rounded (as Bayless argues) then you start getting into the requirements: should they really have to be able to hit a ball, and sprint, but be exempt from endurance and the sheer metal strength of suffering that a biker endures? Why is it okay that some of the two-sport guys Bayless cites weren’t so good at other sports (Jordan and baseball is notably overlooked) while Armstrong’s early history as a triathlete — and a good one, even if he did excel at one of the three legs) is slighted? Why is it counted against Armstrong that he’s not so good at baseball — though it’s never been something he was dedicated to — but it’s not counted against Deion Sanders that he can’t ride a bike over a mountain pass, over and over — because he never tried?

The thing is: set the standard first, and see who makes it. Don’t move the definitions around, adding and subtracting as you see fit, sometimes stooping to fix evidence to fit your own ill-informed beliefs about who should and shouldn’t be in.

If you do that, if you work to come up with a way to measure the strength of accomplishment across sports, Armstrong’s name will start coming up over and over for many of the definitions. I don’t care if you want to say that he “shouldn’t even be in the conversation” — that only means you’re not worth talking to.