Baseball: Jim Edmonds, RIP

A very nice player for a long time. I would even say a great player. A human highlight reel. I might even vote for a Hall of Fame berth, as irrational as that might seem. But he’s done.  I could see this spring that his bat speed is gone. He won’t hit .250 this year. His stats have been circling the drain for three years, and he went off to San Diego to die. And yesterday I saw it happen. If you ever wanted to see what it means to “lose a step”, this was it. Against the Dodgers, in centerfield, in a single inning, the human highlight reel played one ball into a triple and another into a double, while pitcher Jake Peavy asked for guidance from above. I wasn’t sure Edmonds was gonna get up after the second one. Not because he was hurt. But because he knew….

Time marches on. Jim Edmonds, at 38, reaches the end of the road.

U.S. manufacturers seeking total protection from lawsuits

NY Times today has the story of how US drug manufacturers are pushing for a Supreme Court decision that would protect all manufacturers of products certified by the government.

So, we want to be WORSE than the Chinese.

The current case is a drug which was approved by the FDA, but in practice was stronger than it was supposed to be, resulting in complications. The Bush administration, as always, is trying to protect corporate interests from the public instead of vice versa, and so is taking the side of the company. The doctrine is called pre-emption, and it could be employed in a variety of cases, not just drugs, and regardless of carelessness or dishonesty.