The Weak In Rock

So, I’m beside myself with glee about the A’s being within 4 games of clinching the AL West.  They’ve got 10 games left to play and 3 of those are against the Mariners, who they completely own this year, so I’m feelin’ good about our chances.

Of course we’ll get dropped like a sack of wet hair by the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, like always, but at least we’ll have made the postseason.

Last night on my way home from work I listened to part of the A’s post-game show and it was hilarious.  A’s fans are so giddy about having such a convincingly winning season that they’re at a loss for something to complain about.  The result was a long conversation about the merits, or lack therein, of “the wave.”  Personally, I hate the wave.  Always have.  It was invented, unfortunately, at the Oakland Coliseum by a very odd individual who calls himself Crazy George.  George used to dress up in a cape and A’s gear, jump around on the top of the A’s dugout and act as sort of a strange old hippie cheerleader.  He lit upon the idea of getting people to stand up in sequence in a circuit around the stadium and thus was born one of the worst bits of in-game distraction ever imagined by humanity.

Seriously, I hate the wave.  The only thing I loathe more when I’m at a ballgame are those thrice-cursed thundersticks the Angels foisted upon the world a few years ago.  My feelings about all of this sort of nonsense was summed up perfectly by one of the callers to the A’s Extra Innings postgame show yesterday - “Just sit down and watch the damned game.”

Of course I guess it’s considerably easier to do that when your team is winning.  These folks at a recent Washington Nationals game had no such distractions…

I guess you can’t really blame them.  Unless Alfonso Soriano is hitting a home run or stealing a base at a Nationals game I guess you might as well distract yourselves.  As they mention on Deadspin, this would not have gone unnoticed at a Yankees game.

Technorati Tags: the A’s, AL West, the Mariners, the Yankees, the wave, Oakland Coliseum, Crazy George, the Angels, Extra Innings, Washington Nationals, Alfonso Soriano

Anyone who has ever filled out one of those mortality calculators knows that they don’t ask you about Al Qaeda. They do ask you about your driving habits, your eating habits and whether or not you excercise regularly. Some will also ask if you own a gun. The reason behind this is simple - those are the things that make a real difference as to how long you’re likely to live.

Ryan Singel at Wired has done some homework and put together a handy little chart showing us how pointless the government’s little color coded chart about our risk of terrorist attack is…

Nifty chart, huh? Afraid of dying? Then watch your driving. It’s also instructive that you’re more likely to die of work than you are a terrorist attack. Oh, and all you folks who bought guns to protect yourself from either terrorists or the government (at this point it’s getting hard to tell which is which), well you’re more likely to shoot yourself with your gun than you are anything else.

Apparently you’re more likely to get shot by someone from your local police department than you are to be blown up by Al Qaeda.

My point? Isn’t it rather obvious and haven’t I tried to make this one so many times before? Franklin Roosevelt was right - fear is something we need to fear more than anything else in this life. Fear stops us from living and causes us to make poor choices. When we stop being afraid we start to make the amazing happen.

Big thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Technorati Tags: mortality calculators, Al Qaeda, Wired, Franklin Roosevelt