If you build it, they will come...

Mario Lemieux and Pittsburgh Penguins executives made the rounds yesterday (1/4), touring and meeting with representatives from the Sprint Center, a state-of-the-art arena currently under construction in Kansas City, Missouri, followed by an evening meeting with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Kansas City, which has long aspired to bring a major professional hockey or basketball franchise back to the city (the New Jersey Devils NHL franchise left in 1976 first for Colorado, then N.J.; the NBA's Kings moved to Sacramento in 1985), took the somewhat risky strategy in the summer of 2005 of beginning construction on an arena without having any major tenants. This "if you build it, they will come" strategy, while financially risky (imagine the potential losses likely to occur if the building goes a number of years without a major tenant), has been successful in the past. The City of St. Louis built what we now know as the Edward Jones Dome in the early 1990's without a major tenant in an effort to woo an NFL team to the city to replace the former St. Louis Cardinals football team. The Rams moved there in 1995 just as the stadium was nearly completion. Tropicana Field, then the Florida Suncoast Dome, was built in 1986 in an effort to lure an MLB team to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. After high-profile recruitments of the White Sox, Mariners, and Giants, MLB eventually awarded an expansion francise to the stadium in 1995, nearly ten years after construction.

The Penguins situation appears to be a classic bidding war for the right to house the team with the Sprint Center and Kansas City on one side and Pittsburgh/Allegheny County/Pennsylvania on the other. Mario Lemieux has made it clear that he would prefer to keep the team in Pittsburgh, where attendance has been strong, if a new arena can be built, a position the NHL supports. The Sprint Center reportedly offered free rent and a free ownership stake in the arena during yesterday's meetings. It will be interesting to see in what direction these arena negotiations head over the next few weeks.

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Charlie's Manifesto

I believe everyone has a worldview. Some are more informed than others. Then, there are those like me who can actually write that worldview down on a piece of paper. This is what I believe.

THE MANIFESTO

1. I believe in empiricism. I believe we know what we know through our five senses. We can come up with theories or what have you, but what we know is determined by what we can prove and what we observe.

I believe in the scientific method. I believe that what we know is held with a tenative grasp to be improved upon in the light of new information and the rigorous demands of peer review.

I do not believe in the postmodern claptrap that truth is purely relative to the individual. There are not many "truths" that are equally valid. There is the truth which is objective reality, and then there are our perceptions of that truth. All viewpoints have value but those viewpoints do not have the same value. They are not necessarily true either.

2. I do not believe in God or the supernatural. I have no religion nor do I care to have one. The reason I do not believe in God is because there is no empirical evidence that he exists. Believers tell me that you have to know God through feelings or "faith." This is simple horseshit.

3. I believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are no objective aesthetic values. Your tastes may differ from mine and one is not objectively superior to the other. An environmentalist may find beauty in a forest while I may find beauty in seeing that forest chopped down and paved over to make a parking lot. I think Titanic is a suck ass movie, but a whole helluva lot of people liked it enough to make it the top grossing film of all time. Who am I to argue with this?

4. I believe in capitalism and the free market as being the best means for human beings to achieve material prosperity, and history shows us that this is actually the case. Thanks to the free market, poor people of today enjoy a standard of living far in excess of the wealthy a century ago. I reject socialism and communism as being inferior economic systems, and the evidence overhwelmingly inidcates that these systems destroy wealth, hurt the poor, and lead to totalitarian forms of government.

5. I believe that the best form of government is that which governs least. I am a minarchist, and I believe that government exists solely for the purpose of preserving liberty from criminals and foreign threats. When government becomes the enemy of liberty, it has strayed from its proper role and must be fixed or abolished.

6. I am an egoist. I believe that in order to be happy you should live for your own sake and not for the sake of others. I reject altruism which demands that we live a life of sacrifice for the "greater good." I reject narcissism which demands that others live for my sake. I wish to be neither slave nor tyrant.

7. I am an individualist. I reject collectivism and consider it antithetical to the interests of the individual. A collective is merely an abstraction that serves to enslave individuals to the agenda of some narcissist and is the essence of tyranny. There is no such thing as the "greater good" or the "common good." There is only the individual good.

8. I believe that there are only three human rights, and those are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These are rights that any individual may possess without infringing upon the rights of others. Government sanctioned rights to universal healthcare, a living wage, cable TV, etc. are not rights at all but theft of the property of others.

9. I believe in the Golden Rule that states that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. In this, we see that egoism and respect for the rights of others are the basis of ethics and morality. I do not believe in violating the rights of others unless they have violated my rights or threaten to violate them. I have no claim to the life, liberty, or property of other people, and they have no claim to mine.

10. I believe that the purpose of life is to find happiness, and this happiness is relative to the individual. I believe that each person should be as free as possible to find their happiness in any way they desire as long as it does not violate the rights of others.

There you have it, folks. This is what I believe. I don't have a label for this worldview, but if I did, it would probably be "secular individualism." As it stands, my manifesto is subject to change in the light of new information, so you might see revised editions in the future.

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Socialized Medicine

The London Times reports that the National Health Service in the UK has run out of money and is cancelling operations and other forms of basic medical care in order to balance the books. You can read the whole story here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2530550,00.html

Socialized medicine is a farce.

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Coaching Movement and Buyout Clauses

As I periodically checked my web browser this morning at work to keep an eye on the reality show-like drama involving Nick Saban, the Miami Dolphins, and the University of Alabama, I was struck by the importance of well-written buyout clauses in coaches' contracts. It would seem to me that if one aspires to be a coaches' agent in intercollegiate or professional sports, they should take an extra few semesters worth of contract law while in law school, with much of that work focused exclusively on writing solid buyout clauses. While I'm of course being a bit facetious here, it is somewhat mind-boggling how few coaches' contracts actually run their full course and how many are terminated by either the quick-triggered administrator, eager to replace a coach at the first sign of trouble (see Maturi, Joel, athletic director at the University of Minnesota, who last week fired Glen Mason, the school's football coach, who had won at least six games in seven of the past eight seasons, a feat thought by many to be nearly impossible at a school that had only won 6+ games in six of the previous 21 seasons), or the coach with the wandering eye, always looking to leave for greener pastures, particularly when green is the color on small, rectangular pieces of currency (see Saban, Nick).

While most of these buyout clauses seem to work relatively seemlessly, we do find the occassional snafu, such as the Jim O'Brien/Ohio State basketball case from recent memory. To all of you aspiring coaches' agents out there, please pay attention extra during lecture in contract law class and spend a little extra time perfecting those buyout clauses.

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Dirtbag Divide

For the last week and a half, I have had to fill in at work for a record number of dirtbags who elected to call off instead of doing their jobs. I like getting the hours, but it has grown harder and harder for me to hide my contempt for these worthless pieces of shit.

There are two types of workers who fall on either side of the Dirtbag Divide (Continental Divide for slackers.) There are those like me who look to work and try earnestly to get the job done. Then there are those who look to get out of work and could care less if the job gets done. You either fall on one side or the other. There is no in between.

For dirtbags, work is a curse. They labor not out of love or even greed but merely because it is required. Their goal is to do the least amount possible and still get a paycheck. While on the job, they will whine, piss, and moan incessantly about the "injustice" of it all. The injustice is that they have to do something to earn that paper.

The other sign of a dirtbag is that they are always critical of the good workers. Good workers are "suckers." The reality is that they make the dirtbags look like the dirtbags that they are.

I have a low tolerance for dirtbags. They make everyone's job harder including their own. But as mad as I get at these worthless fucks, I must remind myself that they persist in the workplace because management tolerates them. Ultimately, all I can do is the job given to me. If management refuses to do their jobs, there's nothing else for me to do. I just know that I could never be a dirtbag.

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DVD-An Inconvenient Truth

I finally got around to watching Al Gore's lecture to America called An Inconvenient Truth. Basically, it is a campaign video disguised as a college lecture in front of a jumbotron. By the end of the movie, you are convinced that Al Gore is going to make another run for the presidency. At the very least, you get the idea that Florida/SCOTUS will be responsible for the planet's destruction because they didn't give Al Gore the presidency.

Ultimately, this is all left wing gloom-and-doom. Global warming is seen as a political problem instead of what it truly is--a technological problem. If carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the reason why the planet is heating up, then the most logical answer would be to fully explore nuclear energy as an alternative fuel source. It already powers much of the US Navy. It is the cleanest energy source we have next to solar and wind power. And unlike those "renewable" energy sources, nuclear power is reliable and could meet much of our energy needs. You won't see a single item in Gore's movie praising it.

Gore dismisses critics like myself as putting money before the planet. That is a bit simplistic. What I will say is that the earth turning into a fireball in the next 200 years just isn't going to happen. Gore extrapolates from current trends and assumes they will go on uninterrupted forever. Even in the fireball, we'll still be driving around polluting the atmosphere with our fossil fuel emissions.

If you look at a timeline, you will see that the industrial revolution has always turned to more efficient and environmentally friendly energy sources. We went from wood to coal to oil. Then, this progression stopped as the environmental movement got started. These tree huggers can ban fossil fuels all they want, but they are more likely to produce a black market in these goods than to achieve their aims. This is the lesson of the current war on drugs.

Gore will argue that he is not looking for a ban on fossil fuels but a reduction in emissions. This is rather stupid. If the population of the earth is going to double, a mere reduction won't do anything for the planet except buy us a little more time. But it really is all bullshit. At some point in the movie (just like with Michael Moore,) Gore expects us to move from science to religion on this shit. He uses science to diagnose the problem, but politics is the "cure." Gore never mentions that maybe--just maybe--there is a technological solution to this problem. Not one time.

Unlike Mr. Gore, I believe that if this problem truly exists that we will also discover the means to solve it, and it won't involve electing Gore as president. Personally, I think we would be better off to truly tap nuclear power for much of our energy needs. This is anathema to the environmental crowd which is why Gore never mentioned it.

I recommend watching this DVD but to be critical in your viewing.

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Resolutions

It's a new year, and with it come resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking, blah blah blah. By Febuary, they will be totally abandoned. I know because I have had the same two resolutions going back to high school--get in shape and quit being a slob. Still working on those.

I hate making resolutions I can't keep, so here's a list of resolutions I've made that I know I can keep:

1. Quit helping people.

I'm a softhearted person, but that ends in 2007. No more charity. I'm not bailing anyone out ever again. It is a waste of time, and the only thing you will get from it is grief and ingratitude. Are you homeless? Fuck you. Husband beating you? Fuck you. Orphaned? Fuck you.

2. Treat women like shit.

That's really an overstatement. The bottom line is that I am going to give up on the belief that women will like you if you treat them nice. They won't.

3. Be more openly hostile to religion.

I'm just going to quit hiding it and admit it. If you believe in God, you have shit for brains.

4. Quit pulling practical jokes.

People will tell you that they can take a joke, but they can't. I remember where I pulled a joke where I pretended to be drunk and had pissed my pants. The piss was actually tap water I splashed on the front of my pants. Even after the joke had been revealed, I was still an asshole for doing it. And the people who are the sorest losers on this shit are invariably the ones who like to pull these kinds of jokes. I can laugh when a joke is pulled on me, but I have concluded that I am the only one.

5. Stop eating in the car.

I am a busy person and like a lot of busy people, I eat behind the wheel. The result is a car full of trash and food crumbs. Whatever time and money I saved with this multitasking is eaten up by having to clean up the shit and the lowered resale value of my car. So, I'm going to indulge myself and sit down at a table to eat my meals. If you can't take time to eat like a civilized human being, then you really are too busy.

6. Stop eating at my desk.

This is really the same thing as eating in the car. My desk is always littered with the detritus of meals eaten while at my computer. I don't think I ever eat at my kitchen table. Time to slow down and enjoy my food.

I think that does it for my list of achievable resolutions. I'm going to go eat now away from my desk.

Happy New Year.

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