Can Bud Selig Get Kicked Out of Office Already?

Bud Selig sucks. I mean, how can he always act so surprised about steroids in baseball when it is so obvious that he and the owners were complicit in all of this? If baseball really wants to move on past the steroid era, Selig has to go. And while we're at it, Don Fehr, the player's union chief, is a weasel, too.

These guys clearly don't really care about the integrity of the game, or the bad example they set by turning a blind eye to this cheating. Their reactions to the pressures from the media in dealing with this are blatantly just affectations, and are nothing short of nauseous. Today he announced that he was considering punishing A-Rod for his failed drug test six years ago. This is the wrong move for two reasons: 1) it was not against the rules to use PEDs when A-Rod failed the test; 2) there are 103 others who failed that year and evidently will not be punished.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the magnitude of the game's biggest star being nailed for this. He plays for my team, so it hits especially close to home. But it's incredibly unfair and unproductive to turn him into a scapegoat.

If they really want to send a message, they should release the other names and start making the rules prohibiting PEDs stricter. The costs of using PEDs has to outweigh the benefits of using them, and "the good of the game" is unfortunately not enough to stop players from juicing; the humiliation and official consequences of being caught need to be more intense to create such disincentive.

Baseball also has to expand the scope of these consequences. Players alone should not be punished. Coaches and owners should be punished, too. Even if they aren't aware that a player is cheating, if the consequences affect more than just the individual, he might think twice about acting inappropriately. Not only that, but baseball should make it a requirement that any player with paid endorsements must have in his contract a clause saying that being caught juicing will lead to an automatic termination of that contract. Again, it's all about taking away the incentive for these guys to cheat.

None of this will happen, though, as long as Bud Selig is in charge because he has no spine for it. He knows exactly how much he gained thanks to players using PEDs and is too reluctant to see it go. This is supposed to be a new era of change upon we as a nation have embarked. And as the American pastime (screw you, football), baseball needs a change in leadership.

Economics is the Dismal Science; Politics is Where it Gets Stimulating

Something I don't care for: frivolous government spending. Something I care for even less than that: politicians who act like it's a harbinger of the the apocalypse. Yes, folks, this is about the stimulus. And I'm not going to talk about the economics of it, really. It's borderline hackneyed to point out that tax cuts aren't particularly effective (and certainly not in this climate) or that the package probably isn't big enough. I'm fascinated by the political debate.

I just came across an awesome map of America over at msnbc.com. ("Interactive Timeline...") Take a look- I promise you'll feel blindsided, too. I usually read two newspapers a day, not to mention pickings from an assortment of other periodicals and blogs, and so it's not like I didn't know that unemployment was very high. But seeing it there colorcoded really hit me in the gut. Did you notice that the states with the senators complaining the loudest about proposed solutions seemed to have the lowest unemployment? (I'm looking at you, Nebraska) No wonder they seem so oblivious the urgency of this problem.

If people are complaining that Democrats are going falling back into their old ways instead of adopting a transformational approach in line with the style of the Obama movement, the same can be said for the cut and paste response from Republicans. Did you see the new RNC head on Fox saying that "government has never created a single job"? Never? How about my father's job? How about my great-grandfather's work a WPA mason during the Great Depression? The religious devotion to tax cuts among these people is truly ridiculous. Don't they realize they lost on that platform?

Sure, the stimulus bill probably does spend some money in the wrong places. But can we really say definitively what will and what won't help the economy? We call economics a science, but the practical application of it is nothing close. Moreover, most of this so-called wasteful spending doesn't seem very wasteful to me. In today's WaPo, columnist Steve Pearlstein notes:

[WSJ Columnist Daniel] Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and -- get this! -- $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What is most striking is how much 'stimulus' money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure," wrote Henninger. "This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus."

Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient. ("Wanted...")

I think he's right on target. Even if the spending itself doesn't save America (and I can assure you, it won't), what it will do is rebuild the fabric of our society. The New Deal didn't save us from the Depression, but it did give us modern American society- everything from bridges to libraries to parks to schools and beyond. It gave us the paradigm through which everything else has developed, and yes, that involves quite a few civil servants. So what?

If Republicans want something to worry about, I've got a suggestion. Did you know that construction is the least efficient industry in America? Okay, that one isn't surprising, either. Once again, though, the numbers behind it are pretty astonishing:

Every other industry has gotten more productive in the past half century – by about 22 percent on average. Construction has seen productivity fall by 25 percent. ("Trillion Dollar Barry...")

If we're really going to be spending so much money on infrastructure, then pols worried about spending should focus on making sure these projects finish on budget and finish on time. I guess they'd still be tilting at windmills, but since the election proved tax cuts are out of fashion, at least they'd be trying out something new.

Lunar New Year/Spring Festival

As Sam unwittingly reminded me, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the whole idea of "Chinese New Year," forgetting that other Asian cultures (particularly Vietnam) also celebrate the lunar new year, especially for those of us that live here in China. That being said, Chinese New Year is probably one of the coolest holidays, not to mention one of the most absurd.

Take, for example, this article from china.org.cn about the wreckage left on the streets in the aftermath of last night, Chuxi (pronounced Chew She), which is essentially New Year's Eve:

About 30,000 sanitation employees in China's finance hub Shanghai worked through the night to sweep up some 1,200 tons of fireworks debris, left behind by revelers on Sunday evening as they welcomed in the Lunar New Year. -Xinhua News, via china.org.cn

1200 tons of debris! I can personally vouch for the sheer amount of burnt red paper that left behind. If you can forgive the camera-phone quality, take a look at these two pictures I took myself:

One of those comes from the street by where we ate dinner, the other is the entrance to my apartment building. That's a lot of firecrackers. I shudder imagining the environmental cost this holiday pays in the name of scaring off dragons. Most of the fireworks get exploded on Chuxi, it seems to me, but the holiday lasts fifteen days. I guess even then, firecrackers tend to get exploded all the time, anyway, so whatever.

Everyone knows, or should know, that I absolutely love fireworks, so there's no reason why I shouldn't have been totally stoked for this. And I was, believe me. But there are only so many times a man can take almost getting killed because someone didn't think it was really necessary to warn me they had just lit firecrackers a bit down the sidewalk. Or so many times a person can tolerate that unexpected "Oh, no! Did they cross the Straits?" panic when woken at 8:30AM by explosions. As my friend Ivan puts it:

" I am in a country where the setting off of bigass fireworks in the street by private, unlicensed individuals (such as myself) is not only legal, but socially encouraged."

It's not that the fireworks are really a problem, and for the sake of getting a full night's sleep at night, I assume that people take precaution. However, there's something to be said about not exploding fireworks in the middle of a busy street, where they'll burst just meters (that's kind of like a yard for you all back in the States) from the glass windows of a tall building.

Over the coming weeks, we've got more holiday to celebrate. Friday is the Money God festival, Sunday is the birthday of the common man (when people traditionally count their age up another year), and the Sunday after that is the Lantern Festival. I'll be eating a lot of dumplings...

Rocking in the Free-ish World

Walking down the street at any given time here in Shanghai, you're bound to hear music blaring from a stereo outside of a small shop. Subway stations, malls, offices and more all play music constantly. Normally, I would love this. I mean, a world saturated with music should be nothing but awesome. Should be, I guess.

Music here in China is pretty much awful. Going through the evolution of music, as we Americans chart it out at least, China apparently skipped bebop, the blues, Chuck Berry, and Elvis. They've started immediately in the 1990s, just after grunge died. Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys rule here, and Chinese pop stars all emulate this nauseous sound. Talking to my students about what they listen to, they always reply "soft" music. When the Chinese media criticized the new Guns N' Roses album on the sole basis of its name and title track, they mentioned that many people think [rock music] is noisy, and thus don't like it. That reviewer was talking about old men who sit on their porches shaking canes at youth and pretty much anyone in China.

One of my explicit goals in coming to China was to spend two years teaching people how to rock. With that in mind, I went out to ZhiJiang Dream Factory on Saturday with some friends to see SUBS, the preeminent Chinese punk/rock band, and made a point of pulling random people into the mosh pit. Like basically all of the good Chinese rock bands, they come from Beijing, and they managed to skip all those early rock elements, too. Luckily, they somehow found the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, not to mention the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Video From an Earlier Shanghai Show

As great as this band is, and as fun as their concert was, I still insist that the best method to teach these people about rock is not total assault. Remember when Jimmy Page played in Beijing at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games and it was dead in the arena? Hard rock doesn't fly here, not yet. Thinking back on the evolution of rock, I think that the best approach is to take it slow. Show them more melodic, and less noisy bands, like the Beatles or the Beach Boys. It's rumored that Eagles are coming to Shanghai next year, and they'd be perfect for this task, too. (That goes to explain "Hotel California's" presence in almost every Filipino house band's set) I think if we break them in slowly, they'll get there one day. We can worry about the Guns N' Roses controversy all we want here, but let's remember that there was a time when Elvis was rebellious and controversial, too.

So, let's go, Shanghai. Let's bring out the golden oldies. I'm sick of hearing Christmas songs all year long just because people think the melodies are "nice."

The Opening Band, Out of Shanghai: Pink Berry

Corporate America is Fascinating

Over the weekend, I began working for a monstrous corporate retail chain. According to the company's blogging policy, outlined on page fifty-two of the field handbook, I'm not allowed to give away company information, harass people, or use trademarks and logos. The first two, I'm sure I can avoid, but I think the last one might be tough, as I believe the company name is a trademark. Regardless, I'd like to introduce you to a little bit about how corporate America works at the ground level.

For those unaware, I've spent the past few years working for my mom at the family wine shop. Our shop is small, but does brisk business. We have one cash register and rarely have more than three people working at a time. Each employee handles every duty, with the exception of my mom, the manager. She does extra administrative things, but she doesn't do thinks like carry cases or other types of grunt work. At this corporate beacon of efficiency I now work at, almost all of us have pretty defined tasks, at least for each shift. That means if I'm working at the cash register, I'm supposed to direct customers to the information desk if they have a query, even if I could probably help them out. When working the register, the store's size really prohibits me from going about and looking for productive things to do when no one needs to check out: I can't go organize or clean up, and instead just wait behind the counter.

This company also is insistent about preventing "shrinkage"- what most of us call theft- although, I don't think it's unwarranted. However, here, the difference between the small wine shop and the corporate behemoth couldn't be different. First, there's all the theft prevention devices, like the plastic cases around CDs or DVDs. If you think the little sticker around the case is difficult to open, then you should take solace in the fact that you don't need to use these absurd magnetic devices to open the outer shells yourself. They're basically impossible and take forever, and all to make sure nobody lifts a copy of "Yanni at the Taj Mahal".

Then, there's the way they make employees dependent on the manager. For example, I'll come back the register. If I'm running out of change, I have to call a manager over to get some from the safe. It must be company policy, too, because he refuses to put more than $20 of ones in the drawer. Over the weekend, I think I needed to manager to replenish my cash drawer four times in both shifts. When I got flustered during a huge rush of customers and forgot to take a man's change out of the drawer, I needed to wait for the manager. At the wine shop, if I need change, I take it. If I need to open the drawer, I press a button. The manager there gets to worry about real stuff, like stock and stupid paperwork things.

And that's another thing: the manager has so much gratuitous paper work to do. Everything needs a form. Of course, they insist that he use Excel for most of this, even when it's really not applicable to the task at hand. That's just the way things are done, and all because some suit thought it was a great idea. (Note to self: remember that when you become a suit later down the line.)

The inanity of all that procedure, however, is nothing compared to the meticulous details put into display. Everything you see on the shelf comes directly from corporate headquarters. Every single shelf and every single table comes right from a binder that shows you how to set it up. It's incredible, the control they exert over every inch of their empire.

If all this sounds crazy, it is. Luckily, the people I work with are cool and take it all in stride. They see the absurdity of it all, and spend a lot of time joking about it all. We have a lot of fun using the absurd headset walky-talkies we all have to wear to tell jokes, rip on each other, and rip on customers. After work, during clean up and reorganization, we put raunchy CDs on the PA and have a blast. Sure, they've reduced working at a bookstore to a totally mindless job, but it's been pretty good so far, and I'm glad I'm able to spend the time doing it. It's no fun that I work late, but once the rest of my friends leave next week, I won't mind so much. Go corporate America!