Dowbrigade

NEW YORK — Former major leaguer David
Segui admitted yesterday in an ESPN interview that he used human growth
hormone and was among the players mentioned by ex-teammate Jason Grimsley
to federal investigators. Segui added that he used the drug with a doctor’s
prescription because of a growth hormone deficiency.

Segui, who spent 15 years in the majors and retired
in 2004, said on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines" that he continues to
use HGH legally. He said he first started using the hormone after the
deficiency was found when he went for blood work before surgery during
his playing career.

from the AP

We can imagine how the conversation between David
and his doctor went……

"Well, David, while we were doing the workup to
see why its taking you so long to come back from your latest arm surgery, we came up with some unexpected results that are cause for some concern…"

"Oh, God, I knew it….What is it Doc? Give it to
me straight. AIDS? Syphilis? Lou Gerhrig disease?"

"Nothing so dire, luckily, but we did notice that
your weight was down"

"Not much appetite lately.  Thought it
was the pain killers and the greenies…"

"But then we took some more accurate measurements.  Did
you know that you are now one hundred eighty millimeters shorter than
the last time we examined you? Or that your arms, measured from armpit
to wrist, are also almost two centimeters shorter?"

"Are you nuts! There must be some mistake. Are you saying
that I’m…..SHRINKING!"

"I’m afraid so. The clincher was when
we measured your feet. You’ve lost a full shoe size."

"Jesus Christ. What’s causing it? Is there any treatment
to stop it? I don’t want to end up a midget!"

"We believe, Mr. Segui, that your condition is caused
by a very rare Total Internal Deficiency of Human Growth Hormone (TIDHCH).
Luckily, modern science HAS found a treatment – external injections of
HGH. Up until recently, HGH had to be extracted from the pineal gland
of a living human being. Since no one can live without a pineal gland,
this made collecting HGH an expensive proposition. Most of it came from
Asia and Africa and only the superstars could afford it. But now
we have learned to synthesize the stuff, and its as easy to get as silicon."

"Sounds good, but isn’t that stuff dangerous, not to
mention banned from baseball. There’s supposed to be all sorts of Cro-Magnon
side effects Are you sure its worth it?"

"Well, we haven’t had a chance to measure it yet,
but medical research shows that in cases like yours the shrinkage in the size of your maximally
aroused member will be at least as dramatic as the decline in your shoe
size and other bodily measurements…."

"How soon can we start?"

Students in Chile have staged a naked protest against
poor quality education.

A group of 25 college students in Valparaiso stripped off in the main
Sotomayor Square, Las Ultimas Noticias reports.

The students painted their bodies with protest slogans and said they
wanted to make public their complaints about bad schooling in the region.

The police was called but the protesters were calm and orderly and the
police had to wait until they finished their protest.

from Annanova

This can hardly be considered powerful motivation to professors to improve
their teaching…

A day after Whole Foods Market stopped
the sale of live lobsters in its stores, local chefs and wholesalers
brushed off worries that New England’s iconic crustacean would go the
way of fur

The upscale natural foods chain said that lobsters are not treated humanely
enough en route from the boat to the dinner plate. The company said for
now it would only sell frozen lobster products that meet standards for
humane treatment.

“This is about quality of life," said Margaret
Wittenberg, vice president of quality standards for the Austin-based
chain, noting that long before it turned its attention to lobster, Whole
Foods applied the same standards to meat and poultry. “Whether it’s
you, me, a dog, a cat, sheep, cow, or lobster, it’s about giving them
the ability to express their normal behavior, to really support who they
are as a creature. It’s the right thing to do." Whole Foods would
not disclose its revenue from lobster sales.

“They’re taken from the ocean and kept for months.
Then they end up in grocery tanks and stew in their own excrement. Their
claws are banded, not just to protect people but because it’s so stressful
for them that they end up attacking each other. It’s sadistic cruelty," said
Matt Prescott, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
which runs a Lobster Liberation campaign.

The European Food Safety Authority recently concluded that lobsters and
crabs have “a pain system and considerable learning ability," in
a finding that led to Whole Foods’ decision.

from the Boston Globe

The Dowbrigade enjoys a good lobster once in a while,
especially when visiting Mom up in Maine, but we have a hard time empathizing
with their theoretical suffering. Over the years we hve sacrificed innumerable
crustacians to the Sacrificial Pot, and never once have he heard a protest,
a whine, a grunt a cry, a squeal, a scream, a hiss or even a whimper
as they took their Last Dip (or next-to-last, counting the butter).

SOUTHWICK,
Mass. –For the fifth time in a week, a stash of drugs was found in
a cabinet purchased at a Home Depot store in Massachusetts.

A plumber in Southwick discovered 40 pounds of marijuana and three kilograms
of cocaine stashed in a bathroom vanity he’d purchased at a Home Depot
in Chicopee for a home renovation.

Southwick Police Lt. David Ricardi said a second stash was found at the
Chicopee store and at least two more were discovered at a Tewksbury Home
Depot. Police found more drugs in a fifth cabinet, but Ricardi would not
say where or when it was discovered.

One of the Tewksbury stashes was discovered June 8 after a homeowner brought
home a cabinet and found 50 pounds of marijuana.

from the Boston Globe

People with face-blindness, known as prosopagnosia, have trouble identifying which of the three faces on the bottom row is the same as the person shown in the three photos on the top row

New findings from researchers at Harvard and elsewhere
suggest that a surprising number of people are face-blind, so bad at
recognizing faces that they routinely snub acquaintances and have trouble
following movie plots. In extreme cases, they may greet siblings as strangers
and struggle to discern which child is theirs at school pick-up time.

Face-blind people can see faces perfectly well — the
eyes, nose, and mouth — but seem to have trouble processing what they
see and placing it into memory to be recalled again. In its rare, extreme
form, prosopagnosics describe looking into the mirror and being unable
to recognize themselves.

Born prosopagnosics, whose brains are usually normal
in other respects, often suspect that something is wrong, but cannot
put a finger on it.

from the
Boston Globe

Who is that handsome devil who lives on the other side
of our bathroom mirror?

They
say the fastest ways to learn a foreign language are to fall in love
or get sent to jail. Groundbreaking media like this are bound to put the
Dowbrigade out of business, one way or another, sooner or later. This
bizarre English language instruction, called Zuiikin Gals II, features
sexy doll-like Japanese babes repeatedly chanting heart-warming English
phrases like
"This is all your
fault" and "I can’t stand the sight of you". We can’t wait to use this
material with our students.

from YouTube

width=”228″ height=”169″ align=”left”>They
say the fastest ways to learn a foreign language are to fall in love
or get sent to jail. Groundbreaking media like this are bound to put the
Dowbrigade out of business, one way or another, sooner or later. This
bizarre English language instruction, called Zuiikin Gals II, features
sexy doll-like Japanese babes repeatedly chanting heart-warming English
phrases like
"This is all your
fault" and "I can’t stand the sight of you". We can’t wait to use this
material with our students.

from YouTube

Here in Boston, the majority of the local political
attention is going to the burgeoning Governors
race to replace "Catchers"
Mitt Romney, who has come as close to declaring his candidacy for President
in ’08 as one can without being committed to a mental health facility.

There are three Democrats, one prominent Republican,
an "Independent" and a token Greeny, and between them, according
to
the
Boston Globe, they will be spending well over the $30 million record
set in the last governors race in ’02. Already, the radio and television
ads have started to wear their weary routes in our wary cerebral cortex,
routes unfortunately fated to develop into deep ruts in the months between
now and the
election.

Christopher F. Gabrieli, a wealthy venture capitalist,
Managing Director of the Ironwood Equity Fund, has emerged as the front-running
big spender, and has
set
a "personal
spending limit" of $15.2 million of his own money, a fortune so significant
he won’t even feel the loss. Especially if he wins.

The other candidates are a less than charismatic crew.  There
is Deval Patrick, the favorite of the Democratic establishment, is the
"Black" candidate who can arguably claim to be the "Whitest" of the bunch
as well, having attended Milton Academy and Harvard, and later serving
as Vice President and General Counsel for
Texaco, from 1999 to 2002, when he jumped ship to become Executive Vice
President, Corporate Secretary, and General Counsel of The Coca-Cola
Company.

Joining them in the Democratic triumvirate is Tom Reilly,
the Massachusetts Attorney General who named as his running
mate Marie
St. Fleur, a Black woman born in the Caribbean. Unfortunately,
a cursory investigation discovered within 24 hours that St. Fleur owes
over $13,000 in delinquent Federal income taxes, and over $40,000 on
a delinquent
student
loan.
In addition,
she
cannot
renew
her
driver’s licence since she has not paid her city excise taxes. She
resigned from the ticket the next day.

The Republican is Kerry Murphy Healy, another Harvard
grad and the Boston Irish ballot balancing current Lieutenant Governor,
and the Independent is Cristy Mihos, millionaire businessman and Director
of Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Rounding out the field, at about
a million-to-one odds, is the Rainbow party’s Grace Ross, another thoroughbred
out of the Harvard stables, and Coordinator of Sisters Together Ending
Poverty.

Speaking as a political tout, we can’t work up a single
calorie of heat over any of these morons. What do they all
have in common? Money, ego, ambition, good suits and expensive haircuts,
with the exception of Ms. Ross.

What strikes us most as we watch this depressing race
shape up, is how little the collection of candidates resembles the legions
of voters they hope will lift them to the corner office at the State
House come November. Where are the teachers, programmers, butchers, pharmacists,
farmers, writers, artists and truck drivers?. When did the political
class ascend to such a lofty level that only they are allowed to run
for office?

Why don’t our leaders look more like US, and why can’t
voters elect somebody who actually works for a living, doing something
they can understand?

The Dowbrigade believes that we the people have been
conditioned over the years to such a state of low self-esteem, bordering
in self-hate, that we believe that ordinary people like us could not
possibly lead a city, or a state, or a nation. Like a battered spouse
we have come over time to accept our degradation, to believe that we
somehow deserve to be treated like millions of mentally retarded revenue
streams to be milked and manipulated.

And maybe we do. We elected these fools, after all.
We have somehow been conned into believing that this collection of coifed,
coached
and
cultured
elitists
we have elected are smarter, more capable and more morally upstanding
than our mailman, florist or dental hygienist.

How tragically inaccurate these impressions are is
rapidly becoming clear. Whether we can modify the method by which our
leaders are called to power remains to be seen.

EL PASO, June 8 (AP) – Gov. Rick Perry has announced
a $5 million plan to install hundreds of night-vision cameras along the
Mexican border and to put the live video on the Internet, so that anyone
with a computer who sights illegal immigrants trying to slip across can
report it on a toll-free hot line.

from the NYTimes

Fantastic idea, and a great example of thinking outside
the box to apply the nascent Net to the perplexing problems of our times.
We are sure this real-life first-person shooter would be at least as
popular as Everquest or World of Warcraft.

We certainly hope that in addition to the way hip
night-vision technology these robotic cameras feature a remote user directional
control, and a good telephoto lens, so that when an internet user spots
one of them suckers he or she can center the villain in the crosshairs and zoom way in.

Also, although the 1-800 number for reporting finds
would work, it would be much cooler if we had a hot line button on the
browser or a keyboard shortcut that would automatically and instantly
notify the border patrol with the location and direction of the camera.

And why stop with on-line searching. when the technology
exists today to move on up to search and destroy, or at least identify
and immobilize. It’s probably too much to hope that the liberal
wimp lobby would allow us to mount twin .50 caliber machine guns on each
camera platform, synched with the camera direction and focal distance.

But maybe we could get them to wire the web watchers
to paint guns loaded with phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark indelible dye,
making it incredibly easy to round the criminals up.

The very least they could do would be to wire some kickass
speakers to the camera platform wired to the microphones in our computers
so that when we spot them we can at least scare the shit out of them,
and
try
to convince
them
to
freeze and stay where they are until the forces of order can arrive.

Of course, this would make the volunteer services
of right-thinking bi-lingual Americans like the Dowbrigade absolutely invaluable: "Oye, Pedro,
no te muevas. Te tenemos acorralado. Alejate del burro. Alejate del burrito,
tambien. No me busques, no puedes verme. Soy el espiritu santo de los
patriotas americanos, y si te mueves, te caera un rayo."

Once again the great state of Texas has placed itself
on the cutting edge by promoting through technology citizen participation
in state security and protectionist policies. Who needs the Bald Eagle
Cam, when we can bounty hunt wetbacks from the comfort of our bedrooms.

Although the Dowbrigade has sworn a blood oath not
to blog about the institution for which we work, or any of the people
we work with, or any of the students we teach, have taught in the past
or may teach in the future, we figure we can safely mention incidents
and anecdotes concerning the things we do during the day, as long as
we do not mention any of the above topics.

For example, this morning we had several amusing
or interesting experiences during our two-hour class.  First, about
a half hour in, our phone goes off. This after explaining to the unmentionables
how impolite and unprofessional it was to forget to turn off your phone
before a class, or a business meeting.  These are, after all, business
unmentionables.

Thinking to quickly turn it off and apologize to the
unmentionables now and the caller later, we glanced at the caller
ID.  It
was Mom. How can one not take a call from Mom? Under ANY circumstances,
considering the calls she’s taken from us over the years.

"Hello, Mom, I thought I asked you never to call me
at work."

"Oh, are you are work?"

"You know I work in the mornings.  Right now
I’m sitting in a full classroom"
Aside: "Say hi to Mom, guys"

Unmentionables: (in loud unison and singsong) "Hi, Mom"

Mom:"That’s nice, dear.  I’ll call back in
the afternoon. Have a good time with your friends."

After hanging up we apologized and abased ourselves
before the unmentionables. They seemed to be enjoying the whole thing.

Later we led a discussion on the career choices that
place one, eventually, somewhere on a continuum whose terminals are,
on the left, GET AHEAD and on the right, GET A LIFE.  There was
a diagram in the textbook.

We discussed stuff like Would you take a job you disliked
to acquire a skill you desired? and Would you accept leading a short-term
project you really wanted to do if it meant giving up a secure job? We
talked about
stress the silent killer and the bluebird of hapiness and when they asked us where we fell on the Continuum
we gave them one of Our Looks which belied, we hope, the advice we gave
them
on the first day of class – "There are no dumb questions."

But we elucidated, which is what teachers do, and explained,
"I have been doing this job for 15 years. At the end of every semester
I get 6 or 7 weeks of paid vacation. When school is in session I spend
about three hours a day, on average, in the classroom, and the rest of
my job I can
do at home. Plus, I really like teaching and spending time around smart
young people from around the world like you because it keeps me intellectually
spry. The downside is I make less than half as much as my brother the
businessman or my
brother
the
judge.
Where do you think that puts me on the chart?"

Unmentionables: (in loud unison and singsong) "GET
A LIFE"

Then we finished watching the very first episode of
"Desperate Housewives" and discussed suburbia, anorexia, funereal arrangements,
single parenthood,
marital
infidelity and American television viewing habits.

After class we moved our car to avoid a ticket (Brookline
has a 2-hour limit, and the traffic cops go around marking tires with
chalk to nab transgressors) and walked across the Avenue to the Campus
Health and Fitness Center for our swift sixty minute workout. By 11:30
we were in the therapeutic lap pool (86F) and by 12:30, after 40 minutes
of laps, a ten minute soak in the whirlpool and a shower we were back
in our car, work and workout checked off the old to-do list, thinking
about where to have lunch.

All we had left on our agenda was thinking of something
interesting to blog about today. Get a life, indeed.