The Fighting Bivalves, A&L redux, Piker maxima culpa, merchandising nirvana

I’m trying to pinpoint the moment when Wikipedia went from, “Don’t even think about it,” to the first stop on every quest for knowledge. They certainly have no value as a primary source, but no encyclopedia does. But when I needed to verify that the Befuddled Key Coach Judging That One Annual Policy Round was not the Emory mascot, I got the correct info from W. Actually, the only thing I knew about the school’s mascot was that it probably wasn’t a bulldog; I figured that out from reading Tom Wolfe. I was rather surprised that it was an eagle, to tell you the truth. Half the schools in America have eagle mascots. Most of the rest have some manner of minority group, rendered in politically incorrect fashion, who as a result usually show up to picket the home games. There are, however, a few others, like the oysters, the goose livers and the mesclun. Go, Oysters! Trounce those Salad Greens! Pate those Foie Gras! As you can see, I am definitely a student of the game.

Over the weekend I saw a reference on A&L to an article by Pinker on the biology of morality, and another article on the dialectic of philosophy, and I realized that we need to be poring over this material with much more than just occasional spurts of dilettantism. So I have made it the de facto homepage of the Sailors. They can do worse than exposing themselves to this sort of material on a daily basis. Even if they don’t read much of it, at least the fact that it is there might sink in. What else do people have as homepages, I wonder, at least those who have something other than the default ISP page? I wonder how many do have that default ISP page, which is analogous to the clock blinking 12:00 on the VCR all those many years? Never overestimate the technical abilities of the great unwashed.

Having had a couple of weekends off, I am once again ready to dig in. I spent some time yesterday polishing the MHL LD ballot (I posted the latest version on the MHL website), adding in the MHL rules and eliminating some of the airier material from the NFL: I don’t expect novices to be running that many Kritiks, if you know what I mean. I’ve created and populated a Google spreadsheet so that O’C can capture the elusive Scientologists for himself on this shared doc, and this weekend add in as well the folks registered for the MHL through Newark and the Goy of Tournaments. I’ve begun meditating on the February Pffft topic, as we’ll have a couple of Pffffters at Scarsdale. Cost of gambling? Interesting. What I really need to do, however, is write letters of apology for the piker’s actions down in Atlanta. Rumor has it that he was tossed into the brig a couple of times for conduct unbecoming a debate judge, although I do know that he will be returning home with a newfound respect for non-resolutional arguments. [Insert snicker sound effect here.] The last thing I heard was that he had been punched out by Frank Sinatra for being too pesty a paparazzo, but that can’t possibly be true. We’ll find out soon enough.

Speaking of snickers, I went out to dinner Saturday night and saw a “Snickers” martini on the menu. Suffice it to say that, while I did not order one, I did applaud the restaurant’s obvious play to the under-twelve alcoholic market. True marketing genius, if you ask me.