Friday, September 30, 2005

Cleveland close to a wildcard slot

Entertainment

This page on the Cleveland Plain Dealer lays out the possibilities for the tribe catching a ride to the playoffs this year.  Here are the details:

  • If the Indians sweep the White Sox, they win the wild card

  • The earliest the Indians can clinch is on Saturday, provided they win Friday and Saturday and the Yankees take the first two from Boston

  • If the Indians drop the first two games of the series with Chicago and win on Sunday, the best they can hope for is a one-game playoff with the Yankees (at Jacobs Field) or Red Sox (at Fenway) on Monday

  • Also...

  • If Indians go 2-1 and Boston goes 2-1: Boston and New York play Monday in a playoff for the AL East with the loser playing the Indians for the wild card on Tuesday

  • If Indians go 2-1 and Boston goes 1-2: Then Indians win wild card

  • If Indians goes 2-1 and Boston goes 0-3: The Indians win wild card

  • If Indians go 1-2 and Boston goes 2-1: Then Red Sox win wild card

  • If Indians and Boston go 1-2: Then Indians, Red Sox play one-game playoff at Fenway

  • If Indians go 0-3 and Boston wins at least one: Then Red Sox win wild card

  • If both Indians and Red Sox go 0-3: Then Indians, Red Sox play one-game playoff at Fenway

Much as I like the Red Sox and hate the Yankees, I will have to be rooting for the team of evil to further my own team’s chances of getting that last playoff berth.


Posted by Buckethead on 09/30/05 at 04:55 PM
Entertainment • Permalink

Bend over, if you have the strength, and kiss your ass goodbye

Holy Shit!

Or at least kiss me goodbye.

It seems that the bird flu is killing nearly everyone that gets it now, according to an aggregate of links at boingboing. Oh, shit. Remember last winter when I was sick for nearly six months with the mystery respiratory illness, gravely ill for three of them? And the winter before that when I had the six-month cold? And the winter before that and the one before that when I got bronchitis and pneumonia?

Gentlemen, I can outwit zombies, commies, and roving hordes of postnuclear mutants, but I have a really terrible, terrible feeling that when the bird flu comes knocking, my number’s up. Nice knowin’ ya.

[Wik]I mean, seriously. This Guardian piece quotes experts estimating an 8-million death floor and a likely 200 million death worst case if this thing figures out how to transmit human-to-human. Which they think it might be doing.

[Alsø wik] The comment thingy wouldn’t accept a hyperlink, so I’ll put it here.  Because I can. 

As an added bonus, it looks as if that strain of Asian Birdy Flu everyone is worried about is resistant to the primary antiviral drug, tamiflu.  Everyone is stockpiling that just in case, but it looks like that won’t help for jack.

A strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus that may unleash the next global flu pandemic is showing resistance to Tamiflu, the antiviral drug that countries around the world are now stockpiling to fend off the looming threat.


Posted by Johno on 09/30/05 at 04:31 PM
Holy Shit! • Permalink

You have been chosen

Perfidy

Attend!  The Ministry has made crucial and important changes to the blogroll!  After a long and painful probationary period involving extensive background checks, lifestyle polygraphs and a couple anal probes, Ted of Rocket Jones has been summarily promoted to the exalted status of “Crony.” This act of generosity and selflessness on the part of the Ministry unfortunately has led to other, unintended acts of generosity and selflessness. 

The #12 slot of the Ministry’s top five list was now open.  After extensive deliberations, the Ministry select committee for blog roll changes (promotions and executions sub-committee) determined that Rand Sindberg’s Transterrestrial Musings should be elevated to that honorable position despite having a name reminiscent of a Futurama character.  His meaty space technology goodness (and offers of sexual favors to committee members) proved to be decisive in the committee’s choice.

This however, left yet another open slot, this time in the Ministry Legion of Merit.  Rather than reward the obsequious pleadings of the millions of blogs who have petitioned us for recognition, the Committee has deigned to recognize a very new blog.  Albion’s Seedling is a group blog founded in the last month by Jim Bennett, author of the notorious geo-political tome The Anglosphere Challenge.

Thank you for your Cooperation
This Message from the Ministry of Minor Perfidy


Posted by Ministry on 09/30/05 at 12:27 PM
Perfidy • Permalink