I saw this on Red Eye. I thought it was a joke at first, but it is real. There are people this ignorant and stupid writing for money.

Contrary to what those who defend the right to own high-powered assault rifles believe, not all guns are created equal. Due to a combination of availability, portability and criminal usage the following five types of guns are the country’s most dangerous.

As a defender of low-powered retreat weapons, I’m offended. Seriously, how many words for “bad” do these nuts have in their language? The hilarity that follows makes this statement even more ridiculous for the simple reason Kristen Gwynne is a stupid twat, who knows nothing about firearms. On the other hand, 2A defenders are almost always very knowledgeable about firearms. Yet, the stupid twat is going to lecture us about guns in a way that is clownshoe funny.

Using firearm trace data from the ATF, as well as FBI homicide records, we determined the types of guns most often recovered from crime scenes and/or used in murders. The numbers are stark: According to the FBI’s 2012 Crime in the US data, nearly 70 percent of homicides for which the FBI received weapons data involved the use of a firearm and handguns alone accounted for about 72 percent of firearms used in murders and non-negligent manslaughter. While the FBI does not elaborate on the type of handguns used in these incidents, the ATF’s analysis of weapons confiscated from crime scenes provides a more specific look at the weapons criminals prefer, which we’ve shared with you here.

Popular among handgun-owners, pistols are defined by their built-in barrel and short stock. They are the most commonly recovered firearm type reported by the ATF. With more than 119,000 pistols found at crime scenes in 2012, this handgun model holds an unfortunately solid first place in criminal weaponry.

One of the most popular pistols is the Glock, a short-recoil operated, semi-automatic pistol produced by Glock Ges.m.b.H. in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria. Glocks comprise 65 percent of the market share of handguns for United States law enforcement agencies and are also frequently used by international law-enforcement.

This is rather amazing as it coincides with some of my own research. I’ve noticed that cars account for most of the accidents on the nation’s highways. In fact, cars are the most dangerous vehicle on the roads!

OK, drum roll. Here comes number two on the list.

Revolvers, named for their rotating chambered cylinder, placed second in the ATF’s ranking of guns found at crime scenes more than 46,000 recovered in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics were kept.

Some grenade launchers, shotguns, and rifles also have rotating barrels, but the term “revolver” is generally used to describe handguns. Revolver types include single and double-action firing mechanisms, the latter of which does not require a cocking action separate from the trigger pull.

I own a lot of guns and I’ve never seen a shotgun with rotating barrels. Other than a Gatling Gun, I don’t think there has ever been a mass produced rifle with rotating barrels. I think the idiot who wrote this just wanted to use some scare words like “grenade Launcher” even though they have no idea what they mean.

Now, I know you wondering what is number three on the list so here we go.

Rifles. Law enforcement agencies pulled more than 39,000 from crime scenes in 2012, firmly establishing this weapon — designed to be fired from the shoulder — in third place on the ATF’s trace list. Pulling the trigger of a rifle fires one projectile at the intended target, as opposed to the shotgun’s ability to spray. According to FBI latest publicly available homicide records, in 2012 rifles were used to murder more than 320 people.

Rifles were created to improve the accuracy of smoothbore muskets, for which the musket ball was often an bad fit due to manufacturing complications. Accurate and easy-to-aim, rifles are now the most common hunting weapon.

At this point, I’m starting to wonder if the person who wrote this is a poorly designed AI robot. Anyway, let’s move onto number four.

Like rifles, shotguns are fired from the shoulder and may release a single projectile. Unlike rifles, however, one pull of a shotgun’s trigger may also spray the target with round pellets, or shot. Additionally, the explosive that creates the energy to fire the gun occurs in the fixed shell of a shotgun rather than the metallic cartridge of a rifle.

Per the FBI, shotguns were used in 303 murders in 2012. With 27,000 shotgun recoveries reported to the ATF in 2012, they are the fourth most common type of firearm confiscated at crime scenes.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “did he list five guns or only four?” Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is…OK, OK. This idiot is allegedly listing the five most popular guns used in crimes, but has listed the four main categories of firearms sold on the planet. What could be left? Well, here you go.

Derringers, small pocket or palm-sized pistols with one or two barrels, have no strict legal definition, but are included in the ATF’s trace form as a category of firearm. With just more than 2,000 recoveries in 2012 — a small number compared to the other firearm types listed above, largely because it is a subset of the highly-popular pistol — derringers are the fifth most-cited firearm in crime scene recoveries.

While high-capacity-magazine assault weapons have bee linked to large number of mass shootings over the past 30 years, varying definitions of “assault” rifles make comprehensive information difficult to access. We do know, however, that assault weapons — loosely categorized as semi-automatic, rapid-fire weapons designed for combat use — are used in a small minority of homicides and other gun crimes.

I’m thinking the last time a derringer was used to kill was in a bawdy house in San Francisco after the railroad was completed. It calls into question whether this women really did look at FBI data. If the FBI is really listing derringers as  weapon used in a crime, then you have to wonder about their data.

Then you have the stupid twat’s description of a derringer. Gun grabbers know little about guns, crime, 2A and gun culture. That’s something all 2A people know. What’s surprising is just how deep the ignorance goes with some of these people. Kirsten is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. She is simply too stupid to comprehend her own ignorance.

In the various places where I perform my act, I’m fond of calling progressives “lunatics” and “fanatics” whenever the opportunity arises. In comment threads, I do it to irritate the lunatics and fanatics. Here, it is about clarity. Someone who thinks we should “do something” to help the poor or needy is often just soft hearted and soft headed. The former is admirable and the latter is forgivable in most cases. Usually, these are people who will accept limits and logic when pressed. You can explain to them that shoving a bunch of tax dollars into a program will make things worse, not better.

Then there are people who cannot be reasoned with or bargained with, not matter how strong the argument. These people are fanatics who believe what they believe and will never stop believing those things. Their dedication to the cause is so tangled up in their sense of self they can no longer distinguish where the causes ends and they begin. Asking them to give up the cause is akin to asking them to commit suicide. Lunacy is is when the fanatic is ready to destroy everything in order to achieve their aims.

As thousands of illegal immigrant children are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, House Democrats pushed for more amnesty, guest-worker visas, $3.7 billion in funding, and more lawyers for illegal immigrant children during a Tuesday Twitter town hall on immigration.

Their message to illegal immigrants was, in the words of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), “our doors are open.”

“We are all connected. We can’t just build a wall or a fence and say no more,” Lewis said. “This is America. Our doors are open.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has said she would rather pass amnesty legislation than become Speaker again, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) urged House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to bring an amnesty bill to the floor so it can pass with support from Democrats. Boehner told Obama after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was ousted for his embrace of amnesty that Congress would not vote on an immigration bill this year. Boehner did suggest, though, that Congress could pass amnesty legislation next year.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) claimed America already has “extensive border security” while Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the well-being of the illegal immigrant children “must be our first priority.”

Theses lunatics don’t care about the migrants. How can they? Many of them are gangsters and criminals. Others are just dead beats looking for welfare checks. Still others are being thrown out of their native lands as they are a burden. What these lunatic politicians do care about is breaking the back of traditional America. They hate you and they want you dead, even if it means blowing the whole country up.

Reps. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Steve Horsford (D-NV) pushed for more guest-worker visas, which are coveted by big-business and high-tech interests, that would lower the wages of American workers. Numerous scholars and studies have concluded that America has a surplus – not a shortage – of high-tech workers.

There’s a great example of the fanatic. The facts say we don’t need to import foreign workers, yet they persist in demanding more cheap labor for the robber barons of Silicon Valley.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) said taxpayers should pay for more lawyers for illegal immigrant children, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) went further, saying “every” illegal immigrant child should get legal representation.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) insisted that amnesty legislation would “raise wages” even though the Congressional Budget Office determined that the influx of more foreign workers would lower the wages of American workers. For that reason, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow wrote a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus urging them to vote against amnesty bills that would detrimentally impact black Americans at the lower rungs of the economic ladder the most.

The contempt these people have for you is breathtaking. Rangel hates you so much he is willing to put his House seat at risk to fill up your town with Latin American peasants. Think about that for a second. How can anyone bargain with a madman willing to die for his cause?

Maybe this is the inflection point and we are headed for a crack up. I don’t know. Maybe normals will wake up and begin treating Progressives like the Chinese treat Falun Gong. Maybe the illegals will get to the lunatics first and do the job Americans refuse to do.

I’ve been calling this one for a year now. Fake Indian will be the Democratic nominee. I think she will win if the GOP nominates another idiot.

Shepherdstown, West Virginia (CNN) – Fake Indian doesn’t roll deep.

The Massachusetts senator and reigning champion of progressives everywhere arrived right on time Monday afternoon for a campaign event in West Virginia, this one for Democratic Senate hopeful Natalie Tennant, Fake Indian’s latest stop in a national political tour boosting 2014 candidates. Her slight frame slid gingerly out of the passenger side of a blue SUV – her own car, with Bay State plates – and she greeted a volunteer with a golly-gee smile.

“Oh! Looks like it started to sprinkle out here!” Fake Indian said, peeking up at the sky.

There was no entourage, no security detail. Just an aide left behind to park the car. Not knowing where to go, Fake Indian wandered right into the side entrance of the Clarion Hotel in Shepherdstown and strode up to a police officer standing idly.

Fake Indian is playing on the lunatic’s long love affair with the Jeffersonian Democrat. That’s the man-of-the-people sort of pol who has all the guile and sophistication of an aristocrat, but the common touch to connect to the folks. Sort of a decaffeinated Hitler.

“Hi, I’m Fake Indian, the senator from Massachusetts,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Well it’s nice to meet you!” the officer replied. Her aide arrived, conveniently in time to box out an advancing reporter, and escorted her down a hallway.

The low-key arrival was not, it turns out, an indicator of the reception she would receive inside.

In a ballroom packed with nearly 400 West Virginians, Fake Indian was greeted like a bona fide celebrity, met with multiple standing ovations, a cascade of selfie attempts and a few shouts of “2016!”

What followed was a pugnacious and folksy speech packed with the kind of full-bodied populist rhetoric that has thrust her into 2016 presidential conversation alongside Hillary Clinton – whether she wants to be there or not.

“The way I see this, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, all those other guys on Wall Street, they’ve got plenty of folks in the United State Senate willing to work on their side,” she said, jabbing her hands into the air to make her points. “We need more people in the U.S. Senate willing to work on the side of America’s families.”

This is all nonsense, but it is good politics. The Stupid Party would be wise to take note. The Stupid Party should be playing the populist card. They are faced with a party of plutocrats and a president who thinks he is royalty. The GOP base is naturally populist. But, the morons running the GOP insists on pretending they are the party of the monopoly guy.

Tennant, she said, “is strong, she is independent, and she won’t let anybody roll over her.”

Fake Indian talked about her working class upbringing in Oklahoma, telling the story of her mother taking on a minimum wage job at Sears, an effort to save their home after her ill father could no longer work. She humble-bragged about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – the “little consumer agency” she helped launch – noting that it’s already recovered $4 billion from banks and credit card companies for American customers. And she bashed Republican opposition to her student loan bill, which would have lowered interest rates but was blocked in the Senate, saying the GOP’s first priority is defending big banks.

Fake Indian was never poor. Her family growing up was upper middle class. Her bio, like her heritage, is completely fake. If Lee Atwater was still alive, he would be salivating at the chance to deconstruct Fake Indian’s biography. But, the GOP is run by pimps and punks toting degrees in administration from elite colleges. Stomping a mudhole in Fake Indian is way too proletarian for that crowd.

Steve Sailer has a great post up on his site about this hilariously deranged story in the New York Times. One of my favorite gags since the onset of homosexual hysteria is that the lunatics are crafting an imaginary past in which homosexuals were kept on lavender farms in the south. Like blacks, who Progressives claim to have liberated, homosexuals were forced to slave away on the lavender farms as chattel. That makes the lunatic obsession with homosexuals today an analog to the Civil Rights Movement. It is intended to be a joke, but the NYTimes story suggests I am not too far off the mark.

Glenn Burke was 27 when he walked out on Major League Baseball, his promising career as an outfielder undone mostly by the burden of being a semicloseted gay man. It was 1980, and it was more important, Burke later explained, to be himself than to be a professional baseball player.

I remember 1977 and I have no recollections of anyone hissing at this guy. In fact, I have no recollection of him at all. The reason is, he was not very good.

When you hit .237 over six seasons, the game walks away form you, not the other way around. He was not the first washed up ball player to blame the unfairness of life for his busted dreams. I’ve known a few guys who never got over washing out of baseball. They never made it to the bigs and have a million reasons for it other than they were not good enough.

You would think a reporter would utilize Al Gore’s Contrivance to look up the stats, but that’s not how lunatics roll. First they create the narrative and then they fill in the facts. It’s not a lot different from how the Soviets would airbrush people in and out of photos. When you think everything including observable reality must be bent toward reaching the promised land over the next hill, silly things like facts are not going to stop you from reinventing the past.

Imagine it is the year 2050 and mobs of lunatics are pulling down the Washington Monument on the grounds that Washington was a racist slave holder. Earlier they had stormed the National Archive and burned the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. These were deemed to be unwelcome reminders of the nations patriarchal past and violation of the new America. All around the country mobs are destroying anything that suggests a past not in line with the current modes of thinking.

It sounds crazy, but erasing the past is a popular past time with the lunatics. The Soviets would airbrush people in and out of the the past whenever it suited them. The Nazis tried hard to recreate things like Christmas to fit the official Aryan narrative. In my lifetime, the 18th century has been rewritten to read like a first draft of Roots. Currently, our lunatics are creating a mythological past where homosexuals were enslaved on lavender plantation in the South, thus making the lunatic obsession with homosexuals an analog of the Civil Rights Movement.

I’m increasingly fond of saying America is becoming a different type of Iran. Their lunatics believe in flying carpets, invisible imams and sorcery. Our lunatics believe biology is a social construct, everyone can be above average and humanity can be saved through mass extinction. The point of comparison between various types of lunatics is their belief in utter nonsense and their willingness to kill for it. I suspect that’s why Progressives are obsessed with a rapprochement with Iran. They see themselves in the eggplants.

Anyway, the scenario I described sounds crazy, but look at what lunatics will do if given the chance. These sites they are destroying are harmless to normal people. They are important historical sites that help define the people who live there. That’s what makes them so dangerous to the lunatic. Anything that contradicts the narrative, the prevailing orthodoxy, must be destroyed. If that sounds familiar, it should. Look at the list of people destroyed by PC fanatics in the last few years. The leap from destroying a career to murder is very short.

I’m old enough to remember when Arabs were proud of their cultural history. Western archaeologists and researchers were invited to these countries to dig around and find stuff, even Christian stuff. I may be an old man, but in the grand scheme of things, that was one generation ago, give or take. Here’s a picture of Afghan women at university in the 1970′s:

In the 70′s, a whole lot of Muslims looked at the lunatics and thought they would burn themselves out eventually. The more sophisticated Muslims understood the threat, but were sure they could deal with it. Others were convinced the people would never let the lunatics gain dominion over them. Everyone had a reason to think it would all work out in the end, even the lunatics. The difference is the lunatics had a plan and everyone else had wishful thinking.

Sound familiar?

I saw this posted on Drudge. I’m not a fan of Opie & Anthony having never listened to their program. I’ve seen Anthony Cumia on television, but I have no opinion of him. He could be a horrible person for all I know.

Warning: This article contains graphic language.

Anthony Cumia, of Opie & Anthony radio fame, launched a misogynistic, racially charged rant after he was allegedly roughed up by a woman in Times Square.

The 53-year-old shock jock said he was repeatedly punched by the woman early Tuesday while innocently snapping pictures and she accidentally got into a frame.

“So I’m taking pix in NYC & a black girl who was in frame punched me in the face. I called her a f–king “&$;;-:” cause that’s what she WAS!” the always articulate radio personality tweeted on Wednesday.

The first thing that jumps out is the warning. My goodness. Have we become such dainty flowers that we can’t take a few dirty words? Then we have the totally insane idea that accurately mentioning the race of someone is racist. Thinking maybe the Post left out the really bad stuff, a highly unlikely possibility, I went to the twitter account and read the tweets. Crude and stupid maybe, but pretty much the stuff you see on twitter. It is, after all, the preferred communication method of the two-digit IQ community.

We are headed to a place where basic parts of reality are now off limits. News accounts avoid mentioning the race of criminals, for example. A new genre of commenting has arisen in response to this habit. The commenters make sport of the weird absence of basic information in crime stories involving non-whites. In most cases, the comments are the best part. Its like a weird game of charades, where everyone looks for clues to fill in the important bits of the news story.

I’ve written elsewhere that we are becoming a different version of Iran. There, a small group of lunatics is in charge and they force everyone to go along with the weird religious rules. The typical Iranian knows the eggplants are nuts, but the eggplants have the guns. It is simply easier to pretend that you believe in flying carpets and invisible imams. In modern America, we are increasing faced with the same choice. You either go along with some reality warping nonsense like trans-genderism or face trouble from the lunatics. Cumia made the great error of noticing the race of his attacker and now he is out of work.

Bored yesterday I was trolling around Al Gore’s Contrivance looking for something interesting. I saw this posted on NRO by Jonah Goldberg. He was taking the lunatic writer to task for her foaming at the mouth rantings. It is a favorite of both Left and Right to pick out a ranting from the other side and then rant about its alleged shortcomings. Lunatics pretend that deviations from orthodox liberalism are violations of the laws of physics. That allows them to be excessively smug, in addition to condescending.

Here’s the opening to the linked column:

The sheer volume of really terrible and inaccurate responses to the Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. has been kind of astonishing. Every few hours, a new piece of conservative flotsam washes up and demands to be taken seriously. They all go something like, “This is a victory for religious freedom. You can’t make your boss foot the bill for your choices. Contraception is ‘recreational,’ not medical. Cave man mad grumble sexual intercourse grumble procreation grumble.” It seems that nothing gets the right riled up quite like a victory for corporate personhood and the tantalizing prospect of punishing and humiliating women.

Katie McDonough is listed as “Salon’s politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice.” According to her resume, Katie is a 30-something woman from an upper middle-class family. Rather than finding a husband, she has been living off her parents while pretending to be a writer in NYC. She also appears to have developed an unhealthy obsession with her crotch.

I have nothing to say about her column. It is full of the abracadabra words hive minded lunatics like Ms. McDonough find appealing. Hers is a life full of signaling. Like all herd animals, she is obsessed with the borders between her group and those outside her group, the folks we call normal people. Scanning her writing, I see repetitive chanting, defining the line between her gang and an array of bogeymen she imagines are threatening to seal up her underused vagina.

You can be sure she will be banging the pots and pans for Fake Indian in 2016. The crotch-obsessed pseudo-feminists types are all over Fake Indian.

Anyway, reading along for a bit, I noticed down at the bottom right a little block suggesting other stories on the site I may like. There was this one, written by another moonbat womyn, about how she has closed the doors and windows of her life to avoid anything that contradicts the tenets of her cult. Looking into her bio, I discovered she is just another type of spoiled crazy person rich countries have elected to indulge. That being the bobo womyn with Munhchausen Syndrome. Her ailments may be real, but her melodramatics are pure theater.

Then I see this story pop up. It is now featured on Drudge, who enjoys showcasing the hard thumping crazies of the Left when it is a slow news cycle. The writer is one of those old pseudo-radicals that grows increasingly deranged as they hit their dotage. He sat out the fun stuff in college like storming Dean Wormer’s office or banging the radical hippy girls. He tried to make up for it by carrying the radical flag from the comfort of his university office.

Having missed the last revolution, he is forever predicting the next one is around the corner. I recall reading similar rants to this one in the 1980′s, during the Reagan years. Here we were in the midst of a great economic boom and a period of cultural peace and these aging hippies were talking about the brewing revolt. Given the current times, it is just as funny to hear a lefty talk about the coming revolt, given that the Left is full control of the nation.

The lack of self-awareness with these people is stunning.

Anyway, I realized I was reading Salon and recalled how it was one of the first webzines. Slate was another, backed by Bill Gates. Salon was emblematic of the late 90′s in that it was a business with no revenues, but a sky high stock price. They were convinced that hits would translate into dollars, which never happened. In the 90′s, it was typical of the Left during the Clinton era. They published boutique liberalism aimed at the sort of people who wrote max checks to the local Democrat.

Today, it is emblematic of the Left of today. The articles are written mostly by people who used to populate local cable access. That is obsessives and crazies ranting about minor deviations from their sub-cult’s orthodoxy. I’m betting the editorial meetings at Salon look something like this scene from Life of Brian.

I saw this posted somewhere. I came back from my ride feeling pretty good. I bested a guy half my age sprinting some hills. I’m rewarding myself with a brat and then I read this:

On April 19, 1775, British forces were returning to Boston from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening engagements of the war. On their march, they were continually shot at by colonial militiamen.

Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British Grenadiers of the 47th Regiment of Foot from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier. He then drew his dueling pistols and killed a grenadier and mortally wounded a second.

By the time Whittemore had fired his third shot, a British detachment reached his position; Whittemore drew his sword and attacked. He was shot in the face, bayoneted numerous times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found by colonial forces, alive, trying to load his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who perceived no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another 18 years until dying of natural causes at the age of 96.

I think I’ll take a nap.

Steve Sailer has a post up on a topic that interests me. How to improve baseball. He makes two excellent points, one I’ve made myself and one I never considered. The former is the role of steroids and its impact on the development of players. The latter is the playing surface. Lots of people have talked about the shrinking parks for aesthetics, but no one ever talks about the turf. The baseball field has become softer and slower over the last few decades.

First a word on PED’s. Steroids did not just make for more homeruns. It warped the game and we’re still suffering the effects. A pitcher is not just throwing a ball or even working a hitter. A pitcher works the lineup. Even at the highest level, there are batters in the lineup a pitcher knows he can master. A top of the rotation pitcher usually can dominate the bottom of the order. He may also own a guy or two in the top of the order.

Let’s say I’m looking at a lineup where I have to be careful with the #1, #3,#4 and #5 hitters. The rest are guys I know I can go after. Two things are true. One is I will usually be able to work around these guys because I know I will have quick outs before or after them. Like the first inning, there will be at least one other inning where I face the meat of the order, but otherwise I can use their weak hitters against their better hitters. Anyone who played the game knows how this works.

The other thing that is true is the pitcher will have innings where he can attack the strike zone and get quick outs. Those weak hitters will have to swing and swing at pitches of his choosing, Pile up a few quick innings and all of a sudden your starter can get into the late innings. Quick innings also mean the pitcher is fresh when the top of the lineup comes around the second and third time. Pitchers are vulnerable in their first ten and last ten pitches. It’s why they warm-up so much.

Steroids altered this dynamic. It turned the bottom of the order guys into threats. The guys with warning track power suddenly became home run hitters. Guys who we’re low average guys because they could not handle certain parts of the strike zone were suddenly able to get around on everything. Stacking more power in the lineup also afforded more protection to the better hitters. All of a sudden the #5 hitter has a big bat behind him.

The pitcher is now faced with a meat of the order scenario in every inning. He has fewer breaks in the lineup so he has to finesse every hitter in the lineup. The hitters are not dumb so they start working the pitch count too. It should be noted that this skill developed in the steroid era. All of a sudden guys not juiced up found value in working every at bat to a dozen pitches. Johnny Gomes is in the bigs primarily because he is a dozen pitch at-bat.

Once pitch counts soared, the use of the bullpen soared. In the 70′s and 80′s you had middle relief and closers. A closer was often a two inning guy. Today we have specialists for the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, along with a closer. Steroids warped the very structure of the game and we are still feeling the effects. It does appear to be healing as testing beats back the drug dealers. The culture of the sport appears to be changing as there is a real shame attached to using. Shame costs money – big money.

Now, the idea in Steve’s post that is most striking is the playing surface. Those old concrete and turf stadiums were like playing on a parking lot. Fly balls would bounce off the turf into the stands on a regular basis. Slap-hitting speedsters would practice putting the ball in the gaps. What is today a single could be a triple in some of the old parks. The reason is the ball would shoot through the gap to the warning track. Of course, those infield chops could also scoot through into the outfield, while today they are just groundouts.

Speed used to be a much bigger part of the game when the surface was fast. The trade-off for the pitchers was that the parks were enormous compared to what we see today. Yankee Stadium had a 460 foot centerfield wall. Today it is 410 feet. Tiger Stadium had a 467 foot centerfield. These were grass parks. The turf parks had similar dimensions and they had those rock hard surfaces. You could not play outfield in Kansas City or Cincinnati unless you could cover a lot of ground and you had a capable arm.

Was the game better back then? That’s debatable. Steve tends to think his childhood was the peak of western civilization so he naturally calls the 70′s the best baseball in history. The lack of fans in the seats suggest otherwise. Fans like the new parks and they like seeing humans play on grass. it’s why the new football fields use revolutionary turf that is so much like grass, fans barely notice it. Anyone who has walked a modern NFL field will tell you the new turf is better than grass.

I do think he is onto something. The turf has taken speed out of the game or at least reduced its value too much. Making the outfields a little faster would go a long way toward bringing speed back into the game. The concern is the health of the players. Those rock hard surfaces were murder on the knees. As a teen I played some ball on those surfaces and it was brutal. You hurt all over the next day. Major leaguers who played back then would talk about how it shortened careers.

That said, modern grounds keeping techniques can make the surface fast, without making it hard. As Steve points out, they do it with golf courses and in cricket. You could also use FieldTurf, which is super fast for runners, but very generous on the joints. Changing the composition of the outfields to make them faster and maybe pushing the walls back in places would open up the game to speed again.

The big area for improvement is in the pace of the game. In the modern world four hours is too much to ask of fans. Three hours is the upper limit. It is why football is focused on that number for their game times. No sport is better at maximizing the television audience than the NFL. They know three hours is the most you can ask from the fan. Baseball is right around three hours now, but that’s at a 19^th century pace.

I think baseball needs to set 2.5 hours as the target. Basketball is at two hours and twenty minutes these days. Hockey is coming in at 2.5 hours for an NHL game. These are action sports so there is plenty to keep the fan interested. Baseball is intentionally slow paced and that is a big part of its appeal. It is why baseball radio broadcasts are so profitable for teams. Baseball makes for great background to a cookout. Still, the games need to be shorter to appeal to the modern fan.

The way to do that is to knock off the kabuki dance between hitters and pitchers. Pitchers generally want to work quickly, but hitters are trained to slow them down. The pitchers then play around with their pace to mess with the hitter. Instead, I’d like to see the umps call the hitter into the box and he remains there until the ump says otherwise. If he steps out, the pitcher is free to pitch. Big Papi can wander around scratching his balls, if he likes, but the pitcher is then free to groove as many pitches over the plate while Papi is busy.

The other thing that would speed up the game is calling the high strike again. When the strike zone was letter high, hard throwers had an edge. Frank Tanana and Nolan Ryan knew they could work that part of the strike zone. That meant more strikes and more swings. Faster at-bats meant faster innings and faster games. Jim Palmer built a hall of fame career on throwing strikes. His best pitch was a 90-mph fastball up in the strike zone. Today, that’s a ball.

Speed up the game and bring speed back into the game and you probably adjust baseball to the times without altering the game in a big way. Fewer homeruns would be replaced with more extra base hits and more stolen bases. Fans want action and there’s not much more tension than when a speedster is on first or rounding third trying to score. Packing it into 2.5 hours makes it work for TV.

I’ve been sent this story a few times by friends who know my thoughts on gluten intolerance.  I never thought it was real. Food allergies are real, but rare. When all of sudden half the population suddenly becomes allergic to bread, you should know it is hysterical bullshit. I know exactly one person with celiac disease. I know dozens of people claiming to be gluten intolerant. The fact that all of these people were eating bread with no problem until this fad came along is what the empirically minded call a clue.

That’s according to an academic study that effectively overturned the results of a previous one in 2011, which had served as evidence that non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) is a real condition, Real Clear Science reports.

Peter Gibson, a gastroenterology professor at Monash University in Australia, conducted the original study, but was not satisfied with its results.

So he and a group of researchers carried out a new one, giving 37 people with a declared gluten sensitivity and irritable bowel syndrome four separate diets. Participants were first fed a baseline diet that was low in FODMAPs (fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates) for two weeks.

The subjects then were blindly assigned one of three diets for a week: a high-gluten diet, which had 16 grams per day of added gluten; a low-gluten diet, which had two grams of gluten and 14 grams of whey protein per day; and a control diet, which had 16 grams of whey protein isolate per day, according to the study.

Subjects reported worsening gastrointestinal symptoms no matter which diet they consumed. Data from the study suggested a “nocebo” effect, similar to when people feel symptoms from Wi-Fi and wind turbines, Real Clear Science reported.

It should also be noted subjects reported feeling fewer gastrointestinal symptoms after eating the baseline diet, low-FODMAP diet, which includes many foods from which people abstain when taking on a gluten-free diet, such as breads, beer and pasta.

This reminds me of the peanut allergy hoax popular last decade. All of a sudden. 20% of the nation’s youth was allergic to nuts. Basic science said this could not be true, but parents convinced themselves their little snowflake was allergic. Then the kids got to the age where they could pick their own food and magically they were no longer allergic. I knew a woman who swore her kid was allergic until one day he came home munching a peanut candy of some sort. He did not die and she realized the nut problem was between her ears.

Of course, all of this is an off-shoot of the victim culture. Everyone is looking for a clever way to prove they are up against it. The greatest displays of public piety are those that involve the suffering of the pious. Instead of nailing themselves to the cross, bourgeois bohemian mothers pretend their otherwise mediocre offspring have an exotic disorder.  That’s run its course, so now, in middle age, those same moms claim cupcakes give them the runs.