The Yin Blog

Portland's economy (we're #78!)

Well, we would be #78 if every U.S. metropolitan area were treated as a separate country. Our 2011 GDP was just $200 million less than Hungary, which maybe doesn't sound all that impressive, but Hungary does have a population around 10 million, compared to our 2 million or so.

What really surprised me is how our local economy is (significantly) bigger than a number of other Midwestern or East Coast metro areas, including:

St. Louis (#79)

Pittsburgh (#81)

Riverside/Inland Empire (#84)

Kansas City (#85)

Cleveland (#86)

Cincinnati (#90)

New Orleans (#104)

In fact, there are only 19 metro areas ahead of us, none terribly surprising except maybe Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Aargh, so excited about a book but then I realized I don't like the author's other work

There aren't many (any?) American mystery/thrillers with Asian-American main characters, so I was kind of excited to see that Final Price by J. Gregory Smith is available for borrowing for free through Amazon Prime; it's about detective Paul Chang.

But when I looked it up on my Kindle Fire, a bunch of books by Mr. Smith showed up, and I realized I'd read one of them earlier. Here's the review I wrote on Amazon for A Noble Cause:

"A Noble Cause" started off with promise: Mark Noble has set up an elaborate plan to propose to his girlfriend Vanessa while on a Caribbean vacation, but she never comes back from the town shopping trip. . . . From there, Mark's life gets worse and worse. The police don't take her disappearance seriously, his father -- a famous doctor to the stars -- dies in a suspicious fire, and Mark has to escape from bad guys bent on kidnapping him. During this early set up, author Greg Smith does a decent job in trying to relate Mark's emotions and confusion and desperation.

Unfortunately, after that, the novel starts to sink from the flatness of characterization given to virtually every other character, other than a former cop turned private detective; its strong resemblance to Dean Koontz's "False Memory," a novel so disappointing that it basically ended my interest in Koontz novels (seriously); and worse yet, a plot point that evoked long-buried memories of the worst episode ever of the original Star Trek series, "Spock's Brain."

This wasn't a bad novel, but it wasn't something that I couldn't put down either. As far as mind control novels do, the standard is probably still Richard Condon's "The Manchurian Candidate," which has nothing to fear from "A Noble Cause."

Yikes, I forgot about "Spock's Brain," but that review brought back bad memories. I don't know, I may still give Final Price a chance, but I'm not all that excited about it.

A Caltech prank on the NCAA?

A friend of mine who's an USC alum (and big Trojan football fan) sent me a link to this story, with a gleeful comment of "Allow me to welcome you to the club!" According to the story, my college alma mater, Caltech, is also a sports cheater!:

In an announcement as stunning as the ones that brag about a professor discovering the secrets of the universe, Caltech said this week it has joined the likes of USC and Ohio State in NCAA jail by being placed on three-years' athletic probation.

Probation from what, exactly, we're not entirely sure. The Beavers aren't on TV, they don't give scholarships, they rarely qualify for postseason tournaments. The baseball team will vacate all wins during a period in which it went 0-112. The men's water polo team will vacate wins achieved while going 0-66.

The probation seems silly, the ramifications are bizarre, but, after witnessing this week's destruction of the myth of Happy Valley, the message is clear.

Caltech is known for the technically impressive pranks pulled off over the years by students. You have to wonder if this "probation" is the Administration's effort to pull off its own prank. The gist of the "violation" is that Caltech made things a little easier for students by letting them essentially audit classes the first three weeks of the semester, which means that the student-athletes weren't technically taking a full load under NCAA standards. Hence, they were ineligible.

Ridiculous? Yes, but then, so is so much about the NCAA's inconsistent, bizarre punishments. Just compare how hard USC got hammered to how easily Ohio State was treated.

Penn State and institutional distrust

The Freeh report seems pretty damning against Penn State, all the moreso given that Penn State hired him to conduct the investigation. (Note, however, that he said he didn't give them an advance draft.)

There's an argument that Penn State's misconduct didn't give it any advantage on the playing field, so the NCAA should stay out of this mess, or at least, not give it severe sanctions.

Here's my thought: if Penn State's President, Athletic Director, and most famous/powerful person ever (Coach Paterno) were willing to cover up something as sordid and horrific as Sandusky's serial raping of young boys, what wouldn't they be willing to cover up to protect the football program? How can you trust anything that Penn State has to say about compliance with NCAA standards, etc.?

Thoughts on "America's Got Talent"

I find this kind of hard to believe, but the "America's Got Talent" judge whom I agree with most often is . . . Howard Stern. And Howie Mandel is no longer an amusing clown but is verging into messing up the show, between ridiculous commentary (the dance troupe wasn't great, but they were pretty good, and I really doubt his daughters' dance recital looks anywhere that coordinated) and sheer perverse backing of talentless jokes like Big Barry.