The Braves

Well three weeks and what can I say about the Braves that Braves Journal hasn’t said?

Not much, but I will rehash.

The hitting is atrocious. A Jones has looked lost at the plate and is in one of his patented month long slumps. Giles has looked O.K. when he has played, is there an unluckier guy in the majors? Estrada is batting around .200. Furcal has turned it on in the last few but is still batting a paltry .235. The corner outfielders are just plain terrible and don’t look to improve much. LaRoche is hitting .214 but at least is driving in some runs. The only bright spot is the Dawg’s favorite Chipper who has an unbelievable 1.211 OPS and is essentially the only reason the Braves have won many games.

The SP has been fabulous, even when you include Smoltz’s opening day debacle. The RP has been adequate, but Kolb is not long for the closers role and Colon or Sosa should have the spot by the end of the year.

Overall I give the Braves a C+. The pitching has kept the Braves from being complete laughing –stocks of the NL, but 1-0 extra inning games are not going to win the pennant.

On the bright side, at least we are not the Royals, no scratch that, we are KC with a moderately better bullpen and starting rotation.

Theocracy, Theocracy Everywhere but not a Bible to Beat

My liberal friend is always brining up the issue of the growing theocracy to persuade me to abandon the GOP. See I am pretty much an atheist/agnostic. I don’t believe that JC was the son of god or that there actually is a god (see, I even avoided the scare quotes). I actually think it is pretty silly that otherwise rational people believe that some all-powerful being actually exists and cares about them.

That being said, I wholeheartedly support people’s right to their opinions and respect their right to hold their beliefs. If you want to worship a golden calf, sacrifice animals and read their entrails to divine god’s will, more power too you as long as you don’t torture the animals. However, I draw the line at human sacrifice for all you Mayans out there.

I agree with Marx that religion is the opiate of the people. Religion makes many people feel their lives are fulfilling and that at least one being cares about them. I look at religion in an evolutionary way. It all started back in the day to explain the inexplicable, the weather, the Sun and Moon, why Krong got killed even though he was a good hunter and killed many mammoths but Dronk who was a worthless hunter and a general parasite on the clan lived until he was 80. Science and reason replaced religion in everything except for the big questions: Why are we here? What happens to us when we die?

All of the major world religions focus on these two themes. This is not a coincidence. It is the product of evolution, throwing out the stuff that has been explained and sticking to the inexplicable. There is tons of stuff in the old testament explaining earthquakes, floods, pestilence, etc. as god’s will. Well most Jews don’t buy into that anymore and it has all been conveniently dismissed or ignored by most Christians as well.

The one thing that keeps me voting for the GOP is the knowledge that a theocracy could never come to being in the US. Why do I believe so strongly? The first amendment to the constitution is piece number one. Article 6 Section 3 of the constitution is piece number two. The third and final piece is that there are about 50 gagillion different religions and sects and churches in the US and there is no way that anyone could get even 30% of the US population to agree on a single religion. The minute you start imposing religion on people is the day they decide to throw you out of office. Can politicians pick certain religiously inspired themes and get them through? Of course they can if they have widespread acceptance. Martin Luther King used religion very very effectively to cram civil rights down the throat of a mostly unwilling populace.

Religion can be used by politicians and leaders very effectively, but it will never be the end, only the means.

EMP's

Yes the EMP phenomenon is real. A nuke detonated above the atmosphere would cause some real problems for unprotected systems. Most non-military systems are not protected from EMPs. The article and Sen. Kyl are exaggerating the effects a little bit. It wouldn’t wipe out the electrical grid of the whole US, just parts of it and it would be back up in a few weeks. Sure some real hardship but defeat? Then there is the problem of getting a nuclear tipped SCUD into the US, Mexico or Canada. Not like the Iranians can launch a missile at the US since the effective range of a highly modified SCUD missile with an unsophisticated nuclear payload is about 300-450 miles.

The problem with this scenario is that no terrorist in their right mind would do anything so stupid. Terrorists are out for razzle-dazzle. A nuke going off in NYC or DC and killing hundreds of thousands of people and leveling the city is way more headline catching than annoying people for a few weeks because the power is out and their credit cards don’t work. All the data is recoverable since the EMP won’t affect the storage medium unless it is all RAM, and its not.

However, there are other ways of generating EMPs than with a nuclear weapon. It involves a fair amount of explosives and engineering know how, but from what I have read about it, it’s not too tough. You don’t get the same city-scale EMP pulse but a few of them in good locations could cause some serious annoyance, like shutting down the stock market for a few weeks etc. Sure it would be a pain in the butt, but I have always contended that a dozen or so snipers shooting people randomly at the grocery store or elementary schools would cause more panic and genuine terror than the more spectacular attacks.