Kiki Alonso Hit on Joe Flacco

It seems as if Thursday night football is almost unwatchable. I don't know why the NFL insists on having Thursday night games anyway. It doesn't seem fair to the players involved to have a short week to prepare to engage in such a brutal contest. An incident in the most recent Thursday game reminded me of football's unchangeable savagery. Miami Dolphins linebacker Kiki Alonso put a hit on Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco that knocked Flacco out of the game and at least into the middle of next week. Flacco had to have stitches and is in concussion protocol. Alonso was penalized for unnecessary roughness, but wasn't ejected from the game. When this post was written, the NFL had not decided if Alonso would be suspended.

The NFL has tried to cut down on helmet to helmet contact. It has tried to reduce the hits that quarterbacks take. It has, compared to the days of the 70s and 80s, tried to limit the ways in which defenders can hit offensive players. We know more about the human body than we did in those days. And people want to see scoring. When there's no scoring people don't watch the game. That's the fear anyway. 

But all the same you can not take young muscular men between 200 and 400 pounds and repeatedly crash them into each other at high speeds without someone getting hurt. It can't be done. And as other players have pointed out, when you step on that field, you are subject to getting hit--like everyone else. Football players are trained to play until the whistle. If they don't they won't be employed for very long. I'm not sure that by the rules of the game Alonzo's hit was "dirty" but it was certainly painful. And it was questionable enough for Flacco's teammates and coaches to start quite a ruckus. Once a quarterback starts to slide he's really not supposed to be hit. That's kind of the whole point of sliding. Watch below and sound off..

Book Reviews: Hard Magic

Hard Magic
by Larry Correia

I enjoyed this book. I think I enjoyed it more because it was written in the third person. Therefore it wasn't really a given, as most first person narrated books tend to be, that the protagonist survives. In some aspects Hard Magic is miles apart from Correia's Monster Hunter books and in others it's pretty similar. A hero of large size and rough demeanor with a complicated family past joins a band of not so lovable losers, misfits and outright criminals who are nonetheless tasked to save the world. This story also put me in mind of the X-Men Professor X: Magneto conflict as well as the classic Doc Savage pulp novels. This book took me a little longer to read than usual. At 600 pages, Hard Magic isn't a quick read. But mostly it took me longer to read because my lunch hour seems to keep shrinking. In a perfect world I would have finished this book in about two weeks. 

Hard Magic imagines a world where at some point in the 19th century magic or as people call it "power" became a reality. The book is set in the 1930s. Correia doesn't just dump information on the reader. It takes a while to put everything together.  The reader discovers things in time, not all at once. As clues Correia has quotes from notable 19th and 20th century personages opening each chapter. They all explain how magic has changed their life and plans or those of other people for better, or often worse. Some populations have more magic users than others only because different cultures reacted differently to magic. Other people combine both inborn magic and external use of magic.  Some people are able to use magic: cast spells and make enchanted items. Other people were born with magic powers. These people were called Actives. And a few can do both. There are all sorts of different Actives. These include but are certainly not limited to:

Fats Domino Passes Away

Fats Domino was a founding father of rock-n-roll. He passed away at 89. My brother always joked that a lot of the classic rock-n-roll and R&B songs out of New Orleans all sounded the same. I would counter that it was distinctive. Although the music may have seemed simple, when you listen to later rock bands (mostly unsuccessfully) attempt covers of people like Domino, you realized that there was more going on rhythmically than you might have realized. Fats Domino stood at the interstices of a lot of popular music.

Without Fats Domino rock-n-roll would have been much impoverished. Reggae and Calypso would be very different indeed. Listen to "Be My Guest" for a example of proto-reggae. His music swung. It is immediately recognizable. And I really love the clear crisp production with deep bass and upfront vocals. Even his sad songs were somehow still optimistic. A joy runs through all of his music. Fats Domino was apparently something of an introvert. And even on stage he preferred to let the music do the talking. Domino very rarely showed off the wild performance styles of fellow rock-n-roll pianists like Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis. And since the piano isn't a portable instrument like the guitar, Domino rarely deigned to swivel his hips and drive the ladies wild like Elvis, Ike Turner or Chuck Berry. Nonetheless Fats Domino, as much as anyone else and more than most, could claim to be a King of Rock-n-Roll. Fats Domino, the New Orleans rhythm-and-blues singer whose two-fisted boogie-woogie piano and nonchalant vocals, heard on dozens of hits, made him one of the biggest stars of the early rock ’n’ roll era, has died in Louisiana. He was 89. His death was confirmed by his brother-in-law and former road manager Reggie Hall, who said he had no other details. Mr. Domino lived in Harvey, La., across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.

Mr. Domino had more than three dozen Top 40 pop hits through the 1950s and early ’60s, among them “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t It a Shame” (also known as “Ain’t That a Shame,” which is the actual lyric), “I’m Walkin’,” “Blue Monday” and “Walkin’ to New Orleans.” Throughout he displayed both the buoyant spirit of New Orleans, his hometown, and a droll resilience that reached listeners worldwide.
He sold 65 million singles in those years, with 23 gold records, making him second only to Elvis Presley as a commercial force. Presley acknowledged Mr. Domino as a predecessor. “A lot of people seem to think I started this business,” Presley told Jet magazine in 1957. “But rock ’n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that music like colored people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.”

Trump Tax Plan

President Donald Trump and his team of economic advisers recently released their plan for tax "reform". You can read some of the highlights here. 

On September 27, 2017, the Trump administration released its tax reform plan. The Unified Tax Reform Framework would cut income tax rates, lowering the top rate to 35 percent. It doubles the standard deduction but eliminates personal exemptions. The plan would reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. It allows a one-time repatriation of corporate profits earned overseas.

The Framework would lower the maximum corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. The United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. But that doesn't hurt large corporations. Most of them don't pay more than 15 percent. That's because they can afford tax attorneys who help them avoid paying higher taxes.

Trump's plan lowers the maximum tax rate for small businesses to 25 percent. That includes sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations. Many of those are real estate companies, hedge funds, and private equity funds. As a result, 85 percent of the tax cut benefits the top 1 percent of earners. Most mom-and-pop small business won't benefit from the reduction. They don't earn enough to qualify for the top tax rate. The Framework does not mention increasing the tax on some profits, called carried interest. That's taxed at 15 percent instead of the income rate. It benefits private equity funds. Trump campaigned on making them pay their fair share.

Trump's plan would almost exclusively benefit the extremely well off. The people that Trump sent out to defend this plan couldn't speak with a straight face about the plan's benefits to the middle class or working class. There are few benefits to the working class or middle class.This plan is warmed over supply side trickle down economics, which is the discredited but never truly dead idea that if we would only reduce taxes on our "betters" then they would be inspired to open more businesses and hire more workers, and not instead buy another vacation home or more stocks or bonds.

Music Reviews: None of Us Are Free

None of Us Are Free is a song written by Brenda Russell along with the famed Brill building husband wife songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. If I didn't know better I would have thought that the song was an old traditional field holler or gospel song, although in retrospect I suppose the lyrics are a little more direct than those songs tend to be. It's hard to sing about how badly you want your freedom when the very person denying you your freedom is standing over you with a whip and gun. Anyway, this song is another example of how talent doesn't really respect race. Although the song has an earthy black gospel feel, particularly in the version I heard, Mann and Weil happen to be Caucasian Jews. So sometimes charges of cultural appropriation are balderdash. Either you have talent or you don't. Obviously these songwriters had talent. This song has been recorded by both Ray Charles and Lynyrd Skynyrd (!) but the version I want to share with you is one by late soul legend Solomon Burke with the equally legendary Blind Boys of Alabama on backup vocals. You really have to be someone to get the Blind Boys of Alabama to sing backup for you. And Solomon Burke was. Maybe that's another post. If you're not already familiar with Solomon Burke then you should become familiar with him.

Anyway I really liked Burke's interpretation here. And the lyrics are simple but biting. I thought they were inspirational. The lyrics reminded me of so many different struggles. It also reminded me that sometimes the collective is as important as the individual. This version was recorded live in the studio. It's not easy to find this sort of singing in what is today called R&B. I'm not saying that to be snide. It's just a fact. It seems as if baritone and bass voices have been all but exiled from modern black American popular music. That's a shame. But so it goes. Anyway check out the lyrics and song below.

Call Of The Wild: What Makes Dogs and Wolves Different

I love dogs. I am a dog person. I love the idea of wolves. I love wolf iconography, whether it be the rock band Los Lobos, the blues giant Howlin Wolf, Stephen King's fiercely protective if somewhat dim character Wolf in The Talisman, or George R.R. Martin's Stark sigils and loyal direwolves. However it's not that easy to be a wolf person because wolves do not like or trust people. They are after all wild animals. They are literally not designed to be around people. Although the wild wolf's danger to humans and cattle is drastically overstated, it's usually a bad idea to raise a wolf or even a wolf-dog hybrid in your home. Wolves are more intelligent than dogs, stronger and more aggressive, and skittish and unpredictable. They're killers. It's who they are and what they do.

All the same dogs and wolves share so many characteristics that they are usually considered to be the same species. Humans have had dogs as pets and working animals for at least 14,000 years. Dogs are the first animal that humans domesticated. Did humans change some of the more docile wolves into dogs over time? Or are dogs and wolves descended from some common ancestor we have yet to discover? We know that dogs need a certain amount of time to learn the rules of being a dog before they are ready to leave their mother. How does this work for wolves? What makes an animal shy, skittish and potentially dangerous? Is it nature or nurture? And if we find the genes associated with fear or introversion in wolves or dogs can we find similar ones in humans? Watch the video below the fold to get some answers to these questions.

NICOLET, Quebec — I’m sitting in an outdoor pen with four puppies chewing my fingers, biting my hat and hair, peeing all over me in their excitement. At eight weeks old, they are two feet from nose to tail and must weigh seven or eight pounds. They growl and snap over possession of a much-chewed piece of deer skin. They lick my face like I’m a long-lost friend, or a newfound toy. They are just like dogs, but not quite. They are wolves. When they are full-grown at around 100 pounds, their jaws will be strong enough to crack moose bones.

Movie Reviews: Wish Upon, The House

Wish Upon
directed by John Leonetti

The good thing about this bland horror film is that it generally avoids jump cuts. That's unusual these days. There are deaths of course. It's hard to make a horror movie without them, but by genre standards this is not a particularly bloody or grotesque film. On the other hand it's only infrequently a scary film. The writing is pedestrian. This story is something I've seen done much better on early Supernatural or Friday the 13th episodes. You pretty much know from almost the first five minutes how the story is going to turn out. The only question is who is going to get it in the neck along the way.  This movie was also a reminder that time waits for no one. People whom I am used to seeing as the hot sultry babe or young dashing rake are now playing respectable, stolid, wrinkled, greying, middle aged or older parents and neighborhood residents.  And if they are still around in another fifteen years or so they'll be playing grandparents. So it goes. Anyone who has every watched any horror movie knows that if you find an antique of uncertain provenance with warnings in languages that aren't easily understood, it's usually not a good idea to bring that item home. Anyone who has watched horror movies also knows that when you get something that's too good to be true, it is too good to be true. 

There's always a price to be paid. I guess that it says something about human nature that this basic lesson is one that we seem to need to learn over and over again. There are no free lunches. So maybe we use horror movies to illustrate who we are as humans.