News Peeves of the Day
December 13, 2007

Peeve: Baseball player steroid use, Senator Mitchell, and commissioner Bud Selig was the top bullet EVERYWHERE. It was above the fold in the NY Times. NPR's All Things Considered not only led with it at the top of every hour, they did supplementary interviews.

In my opinion, far more criminal is the doping of thoroughbred race horses. And while doping may (or not) "diminish the credibility" of the professional baseball leagues, at the very least they're choosing to dope themselves. It's their bodies and their right to screw them up, however dumb. People smoke too, and eat crap food. But still, it's their own bodies. The horses do not choose. Doping animals for the purposes of our entertainment sickens me.

In the flurry of all the baseball steroid nonsense, there were SEVERAL important bullets that got buried or lost.

1. Canadian salmon farming is likely going to cause extinction of several wild runs. This story was published in the Journal Science Thursday. You can listen to the NPR story here. The study results from the Proceedings of the Royal Society in March 2007 support the same conclusion. That NPR story is here and the BBC news article is here.

ObAside AntiPeeve: Ray Hilborn has been quoted everywhere. He's such a fisheries stud.

2. The Senate passes a pansy-ass energy bill. From Forbes.com:

On Thursday evening, the Senate, by a vote of 86-8, passed an energy bill that will raise fuel-economy standards by 40% and dramatically boost production of ethanol and other biofuels. But it is merely a shadow of the bill Democrats wanted just last week, which would have required utilities to get 15% of their electricity from renewable power. They also had proposed a nearly $22 billion tax package that would have allowed Congress to extend existing production and investment incentives for wind and solar power, raising money from Big Oil to help offset the spending.

Earlier in the day, the Senate voted not to move debate on the bill forward. But after an afternoon of deal making, Democrats were able to win support for the measure by dropping the tax package, which would have raised taxes on BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. The renewable electricity mandate was omitted after the Senate blocked the bill on a procedural vote last week.

3. Mississauga Father Strangles His Daughter to Death for Not Wearing a Hijab. From the Globe and Mail:

On Monday morning, Peel Regional Police responded to a 911 call from a man who said he had just killed his daughter. When officers arrived at a single-family detached home on Longhorn Trail, they found Ms. Parvez suffering from life-threatening injuries. She was taken immediately to Credit Valley Hospital and later transferred in critical condition to the Hospital for Sick Children, where she died. Peel police said the Crown is waiting to decide whether Mr. Parvez should be charged with first- or second-degree murder, pending a police investigation.

An indictment of Muslim religion? No. An indictment of the fundamentalism that was the basis for this violence? Absolutely.

4. George Bush will apparently go to bat over fetuses and frozen zygotes, but once they're born apparently they're S.O.L. Bush vetoes kids health insurance bill.

Even better, the chickenshit vetoed the bill in private.

In a statement notifying Congress of his decision, Bush said the bill was unacceptable because — like the first one — it allows adults into the program, would cover people in families with incomes above the U.S. median and raises taxes. "This bill does not put poor children first, and it moves our country's health care system in the wrong direction," Bush's statement said. "Ultimately, our nation's goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage, not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage."

5. Lastly, cloning fluorescent cats. Why?