idiots!

If you've been following the baseball-steroids-Mitchell Report story, then you know that Roger Clemens takes up nine pages in the report and appears to have used a lot of performance enhancers. So his HOF status is now in doubt because some people are freaking morons. Look, I don't give a shit if he used steroids, he's the Barry Bonds of pitching. Greatest of the last 20 years, no question, hands down, it's not even close. The point of this report is that in that time period, EVERYONE was doping, and he still managed to elevate his game above everyone else. It's the steroid era, you idiots. Clemens and Bonds should be mortal locks. They deserve it.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Ray Ratto said it right in this ESPN story.

"I would vote for Bonds on the first ballot, as I would vote for Clemens, because the Hall of Fame isn't church,'' Ratto said. "It's the history of baseball, and this is part of the history of baseball. I can assure you that Bud Selig will be voted into the Hall of Fame, and he is the commissioner whose name will be linked with the steroid era by first ignoring it, then profiting from it, and finally blaming others for it. I know that Cap Anson is in the Hall of Fame, and he was instrumental in the creation of the color line, which is way worse than PEDs. So this discussion ends up being an excuse for people with no institutional memory or understanding to claim a moral superiority they're not really equipped to display.''

giddy

Taking a break from my India paper to report an event that made me feel like a little kid who just opened the present he'd been hoping for all year. I've known for a while basically what I want to argue in this paper (which asks us to explain the disparity in economic growth rates between India and China). There's lots of peripheral support for the argument in the literature we read for class, plus some stuff I've found on JSTOR, Project MUSE, etc. But just now, on JSTOR, I found an article written by none other than Tom Weisskopf, the erstwhile director of the RC and professor of economics here. It makes my argument, but in 1975. Absolutely brilliant. The greatest possible thing I could have found: An article totally legitimating my argument but far enough removed that I can avoid being completely derivative. I could sing.

two new links

Two I've been meaning to put up: one for a couple of days, the other for months. CHF International is the IDP/refugee organization in Silver Spring that Jeff Meer works for. And Kalil's World Passport is the fantastically eclectic podcast site that I've been going to since the beginning of the year. It's got music from all over Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and a little from the States. So cool. Now it's time for bed. Although I'm kind of afraid because Jon has been talking so loudly in his sleep than I can hear him clearly through the door. Sometimes in French, sometimes in English. But definitely complete sentences or at least ideas. God I can't wait to have my own room next semester.

more books -- updated!

Two books reviewed in Salon recently really caught my eye. The first is Peter Hoeg's new book, The Quiet Girl. He wrote Smilla's Sense of Snow, which I read last summer at the beach and really liked. The second is My Colombian War, by Sylvia Paternostro, a Colombian-American who went back to Colombia after 22 years in the States and wrote a book about Colombian life outside the drug war. We essentialize Colombia so much, tie it so closely to drugs in our own imagination, that we can't think about what she calls "human dynamics, the relationships between employer and employee, between man and woman, teacher and student, government and citizen, artists and civil society."

In other news, I finally found the website of the organization that I think I remember Jeff Meer works for or is connected to in some way. It's called CHF International. Wouldn't mind working there right out of college. It's on Georgia Avenue, for crying out loud.

UPDATE

Also Waiting by Ha Jin.