In a pice for the Sunday Times of London, Andrew Sullivan defends the Bush record about as well as it can be defended against the slurs of the British sophisticates.

Rabbi Josh Yuter, a fellow member of the "Four Questions" conspiracy, has a new homiletical twist on a famous metaphor:

Why then is it that the nice guys so often finish last? How can being nice actually be a turn off and harm someone’s chances for a meaningful relationship? I think the answer can be found in an old adage which usually has a different connotation:

Cow, Milk, Free.

Ah, the nice guy's lament...sometimes, there is something to it. And sometimes there isn't. But this man certainly deserves the right shidduch.
(Despite his off-line denials, I still think that he and the proprietess of newly-permalinked GirlHock have a Jerry-Elaine thing going. There must be a backstory that I don't get.)

On an almost-serious note, check out this Salon piece that attacks nice guys from the opposite pole - of being too attractive, in a perverse way, to marriage-minded females. (Let's say it's written from a non-frum perspective.) As above, sometimes there's something to it and sometimes there isn't.

I'm very happy that the baseball writers of America finally ran out of excuses to deny Alex Rodriguez an MVP award, despite illogical arguments about the meaning of "value" from those who don't know better (and those who should). Click here and here for rejoinders, and here for some fascinating tidbits on the voting.

From a selfish perspective, I would not have minded if Jorge Posada had won. But I had other rationalizations for that fall-back position besides team loyalty. Under the Win Shares system, A-Rod led the league with 32 win shares, and Posada was tied for fourth with 28 (technically, he was fifth on percentage points, but those differences are of minimal importance). That is fairly close (Bill James stated that differences of 3 or fewer Win Shares are not terribly meaningful). And this points up my personal favorite flaw in the system: how it rates catchers.

In rating catchers, the Win Shares system essentially has the following equation. I find it difficult to disagree with the first two parts and equally difficult to accept the result:

A+B=C, where:

A= It is virtually impossible for a catcher to contribute the most offensive value in the league (due to the physical demands of the position and the resulting absence from the lineup for 20-40 games per season);
B= It is also virtually impossible for the defensive value of even the best defensive catcher to make up the difference in offensive value between such catcher and the best offensive player, unless you: a) allot so much defensive value to the catcher that there is no defensive credit left over for the other positions on the team, and/or b) allot a disproportionate amount of value to defense generally, which throws off the values ascribed to pitching and hitting by any reasonable analysis;
C= It is therefore virtually impossible for a catcher to contribute the most value in the league.

And according to James' book, only Johnny Bench in 1970 and Mike Piazza in 1997 have pulled off the trick of leading their league in Win Shares, and thus contributing the most value to their team in the league in a given season - i.e., deserving an MVP award.

James is clearly not comfortable with that conclusion either; he basically exempts catchers from his discussion of "least deserving MVPs" for that reason. I am not quantitatively-skilled enough to propose a fix to the system to better recognize the value of catchers. But I do think that it may be appropriate to give a catcher the benefit of the doubt, or a little "off-budget" extra credit, in a Win Shares comparison. Therefore, while A-Rod clearly was the #1 choice, I thought that Posada, by coming so close in Win Shares as a catcher, was the clear #2 choice and would have made a reasonable alternative.

Maybe next year.

Bob Ryan has an emotional piece in the Boston Globe on Len Bias, on what whould have been his 40th birthday.

Without being an expert on basketball or Bias, I think the odds were against him having as much impact as the people quoted in the piece assume; the odds against such stardom are always longer than most people realize. (Just imagine what people would have said and assumed if - God forbid - the player in Bias' situation had been Ralph Sampson?) But that is precisely the promise, and tragedy, of young lives cut short; the improbabilities are blotted out by the final impossibility.

During my latest blog absence, I failed to comment on the bizarre recent article by Tony Judt, in which he advocates the suicide of Israel. (And "bizarre" is giving him the benefit of the doubt.)

As is usually the case, others have responded far more ably than I could or would have - most notably Leon Wieseltier and David Frum.

In his response to his critics, Judt shows that he is an example of the all-too-common species of intellectual who delights in tossing out outlandish and/or objectionable ideas and claims persecution when asked to think through the ramifications. (Link via Nelson Ascher.)

For a quick primer on the difficulties with Judt's preferred solution of a "bi-national state," check out Imshin's translation of an article in Yediot Acharonot.

And as long as you're at her site, check out this item she wrote in September:

Contrary to popular belief, Israel is not to blame for the situation ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza strip find themselves in. I know we are all in this together and Israel has certainly made many mistakes and done cruel things. Many things were done (and are still being done), that could be avoided, or maybe done in a more humane fashion. This is regrettable and should be seriously looked into and fixed. But these things are not representative of the whole picture. When seen out of context they look horrific, but this is not all there is to this.

So forgive me for not agonizing about the Palestinians all day, every day. I am sorry for them. They have terrible leaders who have been holding them down and leading them astray, and they have no way of getting rid of them. I can't change that. I have my say every four years, sometimes more often than that. I'm sorry the Palestinians don't have the same privilege. On second thoughts, maybe I'm not. They probably wouldn't elect anyone who would want to make peace with us.
(Emphases in original.)

Newly permalinked Naomi Chana has recently experienced some frustration with her Torah-study class in her synagogue:

[H]ere is an abridged list of things I could have said yesterday but didn't:

- "Blessing is not the same thing as prayer."
- "Also, blessing is not the same thing as arguing for direct divine intervention, but if you go on for much longer I'm going to be praying for God to pull the fire alarm."
- "We were talking about Abraham, remember? And this book we call the Torah?"
- "Could we please not rehearse free will vs. predestination before doing some background reading? And by 'we,' I mean 'you.'"
- "I don't care what you believe in. Really. Truly. Honestly. With all my heart and soul and might."
...
- "Ah, yes. Just the time to mention Islam. Some of us try to actually make a connection to the text, but I see you're brave enough not to bother with that."
...
- "I'm sorry, this is 'Torah study.' The 'share your Personal Spiritual Journey Unasked-For' class is next door."
...
- "You do not have a clue. You would not have a clue if an angel of the Lord appeared to you and told you that you were going to give birth to a clue after ninety years of barrenness."

There's more.
I wouldn't mind having her in my shiur. Yes, even in Orthodox synagogues, shiurim can get hijacked by the spiritual kin of Ms. Chana's co-participants.