OneMind

Google has bought Jotspot. The latter is one of my favorite tools, which publishes an online collaboration system built on a Wiki platform. I’ve been using it for some time to help manage the editorial content of 65 Degrees magazine, of which I am Associate Editor.

It’s a really great product and I’m glad to see Google take it under its considerable wingspan as I’m sure the Jot guys are to cash in and get Google’s storied support and access to its user base.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the specific candidates in the specific races where Democrats may have an edge that could lead to a Democratic take-over of the House of Representatives in next week’s mid-term elections. And I’m not nearly as elated at the prospect as I ought to be or as most of my leftist friends are.

Because it seems to me that there are quite a few Democrats out there who are running on the party’s ticket but who have little or nothing in common with the party’s ideology.

Two quick examples come to mind.

In California’s 4th, the Democrat is retired Air Force pilot and Vietnam vet Charlie Brown. He’s described as a “pro-gun, pro-choice conservative.” In fact, he was a lifelong Republican until he got ticked off at the Bush Regime’s failure to follow conservative fiscal policies. Doesn’t sound much like a Democrat from where I’m sitting.

In Indiana’s 8th, Democrat Brad Ellsworth is described as an “old-fashioned conservative” who is anti-choice, pro-gun, tough on crime, opposed to gay marriage and in favor of making illegal immigration a felony. If he wins, the GOP wins.

I’ve said for years, it’s not a question of GOP vs. Democrat. Hasn’t been for a long time. It’s conservative vs. progressive (or liberal if you prefer). And if too many of the Democratic “victories” are by flag-waving, card-carrying conservatives, the Democrats will not in fact have gained anything like control in the upcoming Congress. I’d like to see someone assess the upcoming Congress along ideological rather than partisan political lines. If they did, I wonder if the story would be as rosy. And, much as I resist, I can’t help wondering if salting these conservative Republicrats isn’t part of Karl Rove’s strategy for retaining effective control of Congress. I woulnd’t put it past him.

In fact, if you combine the incidental or intentional right shift of many of the potential Democratic Party winners with the strong likelihood that the Republicans will use and sanction voting machine fraud to steal elections where necessary, we could see Rove’s prediction of a continuance of conservative control of Congress become a reality.

Well, so much for that theory. I went 5-for-14 this week, a completely unacceptalbe 35.7%, leaving me just over 50% for the entire season.

I finished two games behind everyone in my picker’s group, the worst I’ve ever been trounced there.

Maybe it’s time to give up this little hobby.

Salon.com sports columnist King Kaufman had this to say at the end of his wrapup column on the World Series today:

There are about a hundred ways commissioner Bud Selig could solve the problem of baseball stretching too late into the fall. Odds against Selig actually enacting one of them are too great for the human mind to comprehend.

I agree. I expresed my views and a couple of solutions a few days ago but expecting Selig to change the game in any fundamental way is like expecting the government to help you.

Last week was supposed to be easy. There were only a few games that promised to be close and therefore potential upsets.

Right.

I had the worst week of my life picking NFL winners, managing to find only 5 out of 14. That percentage is so low my calculator broke trying to figure it out. And it pushed me dangerously close to dart-throwing accuracy levels on the season as I have now selected only 59 of 114 games right, two games above .500 for a .518 season total.

Pathetic. But I don’t feel too badly; all the experts did just as poorly.

So I’m scrapping my usual system and going almost purely on gut this week. I mean, how much worse can it get? Don’t answer that.

So here are my somewhat bolder picks for this week. At least if I go down in flames, it won’t be because I relied too much on other experts’ views.

• Packers outplay Cards
• Bengals eat up Falcons
• Ravens beak up on Saints
• Texans gun down Titans
• Eagles fly off with Jaguars
• Chiefs top Seahawks
• Bears maul 49ers
• Bucs cannonade Giants
• Rams dodge Chargers
• Broncos out-frisky Colts
• Jets level Browns
• Steelers drop on Raiders
• Panthers surround Cowboys
• Patriots march past Vikings

It is almost impossible for me to believe what I’ve watched over the last few days. My Detroit Tigers — on paper clearly the better team in this 2006 World Series — fumbled, bumbled, and stumbled their way to a 4-1 defeat at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards set a new record for the team with the fewest wins (83) in the regular season to win a World Series.

The Tigers blew these games. St. Louis was opportunistic, to be sure, and clearly both teams had to play under the same miserable non-baseball conditions. But what was supposed to be the Tigers’ strength — their young pitching — turned out to be their weakness. Not because of what the staff did on the mound, but what it did when it left the mound. Five errors by pitchers in five games. Un-freaking-believable. I am stunned and incredulous. If you can’t even field your damn position, you don’t belong in the major leagues.

So the Cards win it in five, a radically different outcome than my Tigers-in-six prediction. Combine that with my pathetic record picking NFL games this year and it seems painfully obvious that I’ve lost whatever touch I once had when I wrote sports for a living to forecast the outcome of sporting events.

Reports indicate that Bruce Bochy, longtime manager of the San Diego Padres, will become the San Francisco Giants’ new manager tomorrow.

Color me unimpressed.

In his 12 years as manager at San Diego, he has a winning percentage of .494. Yawn. The last time his team won a playoff outing was 1998, when they won the NL pennant. The last two years the Padres have finished first in the NL Worst, but they’ve never gotten out of the first round of the playoffs.

This guy seems ho-hum to me. I don’t think that’s what the Giants need but I suspect it’s what GM Brian Sabean wants.

Anyone’s better than Felipe Alou. Almost nobody’s better than Dusty Baker.

Well, my Tigers flat blew this one. Another error by a pitcher (4th one in the series, a new record) and two misplays in the outfield due to turf conditions cost them the game, 5-4. Now they trail in the Series three games to one and can’t win in six as I predicted.

The Cards could in fact wrap this up tomorrow night in St. Louis. I don’t think they will, but it’s a distinct possibility. In any case, it’s highly unlikely — though certainly not impossible — for the Tigers to recover from a 3-1 deficit. They did in in ’68 against the Cardinals, and, as the Fox guys pointed out tonight, the winner of Game 4 of two previous Tigers-Cardinals series lost the World Series. But I don’t put a lot of stock in stats like that.

Most likely this turns out to be the Cards in 5 or 6.

Kevin Carmony of Linspire is one of the guys in the tech industry for whom I have the most respect. He’s savvy, bright, articulate and no-BS. So when Oracle announced yesterday that it would offer support for Red Hat Linux at huge disounts over what Red Hat charges, I decided not to react publicly until I could hear what Carmony said.

Not unexpectedly, Carmony doesn’t think much of Oracle’s move or of the market’s overreaction to the announcement. I find myself in agreement with Carmony.

Oracle is known for poor support at high price points for their own stuff. How well do you think they’ll support Red Hat (stripped and “debugged” by a company which is also not known for the best software QA) at bargain-basement pricing? Not well, is my guess. One of Carmony’s points is that among CIOs, Red Hat is top-ranked for value and support while Oracle is #39 on that same list.

Carmony’s advice? IT departments should not rush out and buy Oracle support for their Red Hat server Linux installations. Rather, they should take a serious look at switching to an open source database solution to replace that offered by an expensive and increasingly fragmented Oracle Corp.

Baseball’s season is out of whack. Somebody needs to do something about it. The season needs one of two adjustments: an earlier start or a shortened schedule. Me, I’d be in favor of a shortened schedule if it weren’t for all the record calculations being tossed into a cocked hat.

Weather for the post-season has been borderline miserable and except for games played on the Correct Coast, never really warm. Baseball is a summer sport. The World Series is supposed to be a Fall Classic, not a Winter Deep-freeze. Enough already!

Major League Baseball has just put together a five-year contract with the players, so strikes are unthinkable, along with meaningful drug testing. Now they need to go back to the bargaining table and negotiate a baseball season that has spring training start 3-5 weeks earlier than it does these days. (After all, spring training is held in guaranteed warm climes to begin with; you could have spring training in December or January for heaven’s sake!) That would move the World Series near the beginning of the NFL season, which would have lots of benefits besides ensuring at least a strong likelihood of decent weather.

Baseball wasn’t meant to be played in the snow and rain and cold, people. Figure this out.