Bill Belichick Made the Right Decision

I wrote last year about football coaches punting too much. Most football fans think that those of us who advocate eschewing punting are crazy (or maybe just stupid). They see New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick's decision to go for first down on 4th-and-two at his own 29 with two minutes to go in last Sunday's last-minute loss to the Indianapolis Colts is further evidence that teams should always punt in situations like this. However, that is incorrect thinking. Belichick did the right thing. See here, here, here, or here.

Money quote (from Bill Barnwell), and the lesson we should take from all after-the-fact analyses:

"The important factor that the cacophony of responses seems to be missing is that you can't judge Belichick's decision by the fact that it didn't work. As we've mentioned more than once in these pages, you cannot judge decisions by their outcome. You have to consider the process that goes into them, and then decide whether they're right or wrong at the moment they're made."

If the goal was to win the game, Belichick made the right decision regardless of the outcome.

Humbling

Though I'd heard of him previously, I first met John McAlister in 2004 at the first event of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers (SAPFM) I ever attended. SAPFM may sound impressive, but it is really just 800 guys who have $35 and a table saw in their basement, and have a serious interest in 18th century American furniture. John had received the 2001 Cartouche Award from SAPFM recognizing outstanding American Woodworkers.He was the second person to be recognized with this award.

John grew up in Greensboro (he is of the Greensboro McAlisters) but spent most of his life in Charlotte where he was in the textile business. He began woodworking as a hobby in 1968 and is entirely self-taught--but boy, is he taught! I had the opportunity to visit John's home last weekend to see some of his furniture and his workshop.

Though he has never sold a piece, he has a large family (two marriages and seven children I believe he said) and so he has given away a lot of furniture he has made to family. I believe he said he is currently working on his fifth grandfather clock, for instance. Even with that, he has a home full of the most beautiful 18th century furniture you can imagine.

John's most famous piece is a copy of the Nicholas Brown tall secretary that sold for $12 million in 1989. Since then a number of woodworkers have made copies of this secretary, but John was one of the first, and he did a great deal of original research to be able to make the plans for the piece.

I've posted other pictures of John's furniture (and some of his workshop) on Flickr here but they hardly do justice to the scope of John's woodworking. I suspect there are very few woodworkers who have two bonnet-top highboys, one in their dining room and another in their bedroom.

Upon leaving John's house, one of the other amateur woodworkers in the group sighed "Boy, was that humbling." He got that right!

Mine Is Bigger Than Yours!

Joel Gillespie posts a picture of a big tree.

Ed Cone follows up with a picture of another big tree.

Steve Harrison adds his big tree.

John Nack of Adobe raises the stakes.

Game over.

(Be sure to watch the video at the NPR site.)

Oh, Wow! Oh, deer.

View Larger Map

On my way to supper earlier this evening I saw a large deer standing along Lakewood Drive as I turned left onto Lakewood from Farrar, heading towards Friendly Ave. The deer dove into the woods of Hamilton Lake park between Lakewood and Starmount about opposite 1106 Lakewood. This is the first deer I've seen this far into town. I don't know if it is a resident or a tourist, but I'll be looking for it on my daily walks through this area.

"What a coincidence!”

After the death of his high school friend Jas Howard, the UConn football player murdered a week ago, Clemson defensive back Chris Chancellor requested he be allowed to wear Howard's number 6 for the Tiger's Saturday game against Miami in his and Jas's hometown. The complication was that 6 was normally worn by Jacoby Ford, Clemson's outstanding wide receiver and kick returner. Coach Dabo Swinney realized that since Chancellor and Ford wouldn't be on the field at the same time (since one was on offense and the other defense) it was within the rules for two players to have the same number so he granted the request.

Chancellor played well in the game, making four individual and one assisted tackles in the game. Ford's play wasn't spectacular; he had two rushes for 16 yards and a first-quarter pass reception for 11 yards--until the last play of the game. In overtime, Ford caught a 26-yd pass for a TD and walk-off win for the Tigers. As fate would have it, #6 was the difference in the game. Coincidence, or the invisible hand at work? (For more details, see here.)

Today In History: Baby Fae

Today is the 25th anniversary of surgeons implanting a baboon heart into a human infant. "Baby Fae" survived 21 days before succumbing to kidney failure.

Scientists have still been unsuccessful in transplanting a human heart into a banker.

Today is Saint Crispin's Day

"This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3. Think of it as medieval Veterans Day.

My Trip to the World Series--Memories of Tom Romenesko

It's been thirty years since my trip to the 1979 World Series so I thought I'd tell the story:

It was a cold winter day in early 1979 when I first met Tom Romenesko. I called on him in his "office" at Memorial Stadium to sell him on Greensboro Printing Company producing the season game programs for the Hornets, the new baseball team in town. Tom was general manager of the new franchise, but as one of a three-person staff he was just about everything else too. His office looked like a converted storage room (I think it was), and the rest of the stadium was just as dilapidated. It look all of its 50 years old. Tom's office must have been heated, but all I remember was that it was damn cold! We talked about baseball, the old Greensboro baseball teams that I had so ardently followed as as kid, and the advantages of his having GPC produce the Hornet programs.

It must have been pretty good salesmanship--we got the order, and over the process of producing the job (and for the next two years, too), Tom and I got to be good friends. Tom was one of the most promotional-minded people I had ever met. He knew he was in the family entertainment business, not just the baseball business, and he worked tirelessly to make sure Hornets games were good family fun. I believe this is more than slightly responsible for the success baseball has had in Greensboro since then.

Tom's zeal for promotions reminded me of Bill Veeck, the great Chicago promoter. (Tom had many good ideas, but one that didn't work out was selling sponsorship of the foul-poles at the stadium to the Holly Farms Chicken folks--foul-poles, fowl-poles, get it? har-har.)

For the game programs, Tom wanted to print "lucky numbers" throughout the program so he could offer prizes to program purchasers to stimulate sales. This was a difficult technical production problem. GPC could only number two pages at a time and Tom wanted eight numbers per program,which presented a big challenge. We found that another local printer, L&E Packaging, a tag-and-label printer and not a direct competitor, could number large 8-page sheets so we contracted with them for that portion of the project and Tom was a happy customer.

The Hornets were a farm-team of the Cincinnati Reds that year and the "Big Red Machine" was in a battle for the National League pennant that summer. As a farm team general manager, Tom got four World Series tickets. He wasn't able to go to the series so he offered the tickets to me and my friend Hugh Morton, Jr. We jumped at the opportunity and planned a great trip to Cincinnati.

And we'd have had a great time, too, except for the fact that the World Series was in Pittsburgh that year. The Big Red Machine lost three straight games to the Pirates in the best of five 1979 NLCS so Hugh and I stayed home. All I have is copies of the tickets to our great seats for games that were 300 miles away.

Tom was GM of the Hornets for three years before moving on to bigger things. We sort-of kept up over the years, but the last time I talked to Tom was in late 2000 I think. The Hornets/Bats/Whatever had new ownership and one of the new owners said what they needed was a GM like Tom Romenesko. Someone then suggested why not get the real Tom Romenesko so they contacted him to see if he might be interested. Tom called me to see what I knew about the new owners and I told him I didn't really know much but I thought a lot of Jim Melvin. I wasn't able to see Tom when/if he came to interview, and in the end he didn't get the job, and I haven't talked with him since, though we've e-mailed a couple of times.

I have suggested too the Grasshoppers that they should have a Tom Romenesko Appreciation Day sometime. It would be a fitting tribute to the person who more than anyone else made minor-league baseball successful in Greensboro.

Here is an article from Sports Illustrated in 1979 with a little about the Hornets and Tom. It brings back some fond memories:

"In the meantime, Nashville cannot rest on its laurels. Greensboro, North Carolina, is suddenly challenging it as the nation's top minor league town. Greensboro had been without professional baseball for a decade when the Hornets arrived this spring, under the direction of a former umpire named Tom Romenesko. The Class A ball club is on its way to drawing 170,000, which would exceed Greensboro's population and perhaps make Romenesko the choice to succeed Schmittou as The Sporting News Minor League Executive of the Year. "

Here is a picture of Tom and his wife Becky (and my friend Jeanne Tannenbaum) from the fall of 1981.

But Can He Spell "Potato"?

President Obama had a little trouble with numbers yesterday when he was presenting Medals of Freedom to a number of prominent Americans. He didn't get any of Billie Jean King's right. (From Althouse.)

Significant Digits

Stumbling around the Internet this morning I ran across this post:

"Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble."

I didn't click further to see how they defined "babble" or how they determined whether the babble was of the pointless or pointed variety. What stopped me cold was the precision of 40.55%. Not 40% or 45% or even 41%. 40.55%!

One of the concepts I learned in engineering school was that of significant digits. Way too many folks don't understand this important principle. For the innumerate it is the functional equivalent of a grammar error. It reflects poorly on the credibility of the author.

One-third of a million isn't 333,333, it's about 330,000. Any number more precise than that is drivel. There are only one or two significant digits in a million ( between 500,000 and 1,500,000 or even between 900,000 and 1,100,000) so a third of that number has only one or two significant digits.

That's today's lesson in Numeracy. For further reading, go to this book. I recommend it!

The Hurt Locker

I saw The Hurt Locker yesterday, and I really liked it. It is a realistic, unromantic, austere, intense story of a squad of EOD (explosive ordnance demolition, i.e. "bomb squad") soldiers in Iraq in 2004. Joe Morganstern of the Wall Street Journal had a very accurate review.

Kathryn Bigelow’s film, which was written by Mark Boal, manages to be many things at once—a first-rate action thriller, a vivid evocation of urban warfare in Iraq, a penetrating study of heroism and a showcase for austere technique, terse writing and a trio of brilliant performances. Most of all, though, it’s an instant classic that demonstrates, in a brutally hot and dusty laboratory setting, how the drug of war hooks its victims and why they can’t kick the habit.

I give the movie 4 Stars!

Our Representatives in Congress Are Hip!

So, Congress has decided to spend the $100 million in savings they recently trumpeted by purchasing three new Gulfstream G550 executive jets for $200 million. This makes Congressfolks hip, as in hypocritical, ironic, and privileged.

"The notion that some lawmakers feel it beneath their dignity to travel with the masses on commercial jets is nothing new. But news of the House plan does bring to mind three salient facts, all of which the Democratic leadership hopes the public does not think of in relation to the jet purchase.

Congress isn't short of hypocrisy. Most of the Democrats and their environmentalist allies are reflexively opposed to private jet travel because of its excessive carbon footprint. Or, at least, they are opposed to private jet travel for others.

Neither does it recognize irony. CEOs of the Big Three automakers were excoriated for traveling in their private jets last year to testify in Washington.

And some have an outsized sense of privilege. In 2007, just a month into the new Democratic majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked that taxpayers provide a jet that could make a nonstop flight to her Bay Area district. She reportedly wanted a luxury, stateroom-outfitted version of Boeing's 757-200 like those the vice president, first lady and Cabinet officials fly on.

And there was a lot of foot-stamping when the Bush White House said no."

Happy Birthday. Good News!

Sixty-seven years ago today I entered this world. It was front page news in the Good News:

My Other Car Is a F/A-18

Or is it a Formula One Racer?

Details here. (From Adobe's John Nack.)

On Grammar

I might have become an English major if the discussions on grammar in Mrs. Hunsinger's 9th grade English class had been this interesting. (Vulgarism ALERT)

Orders of Magnitude

Today's Rant: I hate it when writers mix up various number denominations (trillions, billions, millions, etc.) in the same article. I believe good writing form dictates writers should chose one denomination and stick with it. For example in today's Wall Street Journal there is an article on the federal government's efforts to institute various cost savings In a Savings Shocker, the Government Discovers That Paper Has Two Sides. In it, Jonathan Weisman writes about a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $100 million savings challenge, and various savings of $52 million, $320,000, $18 million, $5 million, $573,000, $318,000, $47,160, $2 million, $3.8 million, and later, $40 billion.

This is seriously misleading. If Weisman were to pick one denomination, (say, million, since that is the most common) and be consistant, these numbers would be a much more revealing: $2,000,000 million, $100 million, $52 million, $0.18 million, $0.47 million, $2 million, $3.8 million, and $40,000 million. The difference between $2 trillion and $100 million may not sound like much, but the difference between 2,000,000 and 100 is clear.

Is Your Doctor Killing You?

This month seems to by my "doctor" month: colonoscopy last week, cardiology 6-month check-up this week, and my annual physical next week. I am a "victim" of coronary by-pass surgery as well as a small stroke a couple of years ago, so I'm attentive to my coronary health. As best as I can determine, the one thing I can do to improve my life expectancy is to lose some weight.



But the hard thing is just how does one go about losing the weight. I'm not sure physicians are all that good at telling us how to shed the excess pounds. A year and a half ago I read ("slogged my way through" may be more accurate) Gary Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories which makes a very persuasive case for the fact that the basis for most nutrition advice in this country is wrong, i.e., we should be eating a heart-healthy low-fat diet and should be exercising and controlling the amount of calories we consume. Taubes says the science and the medical research prove that a low-fat diet, which by its nature is a high carbohydrate diet, is precisely the thing that is making us all fatter.

The Good Calories book is a very difficult read. It goes deeply into the physiology of obesity and diet, but I think the results are worth the effort. For someone who doesn't want to invest the couple of weeks of free-time reading the book takes, it is probably worthwhile to listen to Taubes lecture on the subject. He recently did so at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock School of Medicine, available here.

The entire lecture is about an hour long, but if you don't want to spent that much time, forward to the conclusion (click on the "Thumbs" tab in the player window and then click (or double-click) on the antepenultimate slide (third from the last) and listen to the six minute summary at the end of the lecture.

Taubes' research makes a lot of sense. One questioner calls this "the biggest public health disaster in modern history--the epidemic of obesity and diabetes". Most physicians still believe what they learned in school in the past 40 years--that low fat is healthy because everyone knows it's true. Physicians who are not aware of the latest science and research may be killing us with bad advice.

In the 18 months since I read Taubes book I've been following a low-carb lifestyle, and though I haven't lost much weight, I haven't gained any either even though I've paid virtually no attention to the number of calories I've eaten. However, I am influenced by that fat-is-bad image in the back of my head. For example, at lunch I've given up Vienna sausages (0 grams of carbs) and will have a whole wheat sandwich (20 grams of carbs) instead because everyone says the sandwich is healthier. Maybe soon more doctors will realize low-carb is healthier than low-fat and it will become easier to eat a healthy low-carb diet.

Tom Watson

I've been a fan of golfer Tom Watson ever since he came out on the PGA tour in 1971. I had a good friend in the Army named Tom Watson, and though they was no connection between the two I still always was a Tom-Watson-the-golfer fan. When TWTG came to the 1993 GGO my friend Wade Peoples got the above autograph for me.

About the only resemblance between my golf game and Tom's was that we generally carried the same number of clubs in our bags. I did, however, once make a stroke that Tom would have given a lot of money for. In 1984 I took a golfing trip to Ireland and Scotland with my buddy Roy Johnston. We played one round at Carnoustie in Scotland and it was very memorable.

We had two old guys, John and Charlie, for caddies. Both were life-long Carnoustie residents. John was 67 and retired and had been caddying since his retirement. John was 76 and had been caddying all his life. Both had followed Ben Hogan when he came to Scotland for the 1953 (British) Open tournament at Carnoustie and had several stories about Ben's exploits. After hitting our tee shots on the first hole, I asked Charlie if they played "mulligans" in Scotland. His reply: "Aye, lad, we do. We call them 'three'.".

Roy, John, Preston, and Charlie

Tom Watson won his first Open Championship in 1975 at Carnoustie. He needed five rounds to win that year since he and Jack Newton were tied after 72 holes. In all five rounds, Tom boggied the 16th hole, a 235-yd par three he has described as the toughest par 3 in golf. For Tom, maybe, but not for me. Against Charlie's advice (he thought it was too much club) I rifled a 3-wood shot to about 5 feet from the hole. Of course, I missed the birdie putt, but I know Tom Watson would have loved to have that 3 in any of his five tries in 1975. I even have photo evidence of the shot.:

Does Tom have a chance to win the Open Tournament tomorrow? I don't think so. The USA Olympic Hockey team had no chance against the Russians in 1980, The Jets had no chance against the Colts and the Mets couldn't win the World Series in 1969. NC State stood no chance against Phi Slama Jamma in 1983.

On second thought, maybe Tom can win.

Ted Williams

As I have written before, I've been a Ted Williams fan since I was a little boy and my father told me he had been in service with Ted. I never met Ted and I was very envious of my friend Hugh Morton, Jr. who had a picture of himself and Ted. Ted has been the news a couple of times today.

In the Wall Street Journal today Allen Barra has a review of the up-coming HBO Special “Ted Williams—There Goes the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”. I don't have HBO and I hope that some of my friends who do will tape the show for me. (Do you think anyone still knows how to tape tv shows?)

This morning, the right-center field of Bloggerstan was all atwitter with stories about President Obama's throwing out the first pitch at last night's All-Star Game. See here, here, or here. Locally, even Dr. Joe couldn't help piling on. Joe certainly had the cruelest critique: "Obama throws like a girl". Joe also included a YouTube video of pitcher Steve Hamilton throwing his "floater folly" pitch, but Joe doesn't mention one of the early "floater" pitchers, Rip Sewell, and his Eephus pitch.

Ted Williams probably did more than anyone else to make the Eephus famous. In the 1946 All-Star Game, held at Fenway Park, Sewell faced Ted in the bottom of the 8th inning with the National League already behind by nine runs and with two men on base. Rip threw Ted a first Eephus pitch and Ted missed badly, but Rip couldn't stand prosperity. He tried again. On the second Eephus, Rip always said Ted popped it up. Rip said at first he thought he could catch it, and then he thought the second baseman would catch it. Finally, he thought the right fielder would surely get it. Reportedly, the ball landed many rows deep in the right field bleachers, others say it was the bullpen. The final score was 12-zip, the first All-Star shut-out, and the Eefus was legendary.

One of my other favorite Ted Williams stories involves the All-Star Game a decade later. At mid-century, two of the best players in baseball both played in Boston, but they rarely faced each other. Ted's Red Sox were in the American League, and Warren Spahn, a Hall-of-Fame left-handed pitcher was with the Boston Braves in the National League. The Red Sox and Braves did play an exhibition game each spring, and in one of those games, Spahn faced Williams and struck him out with a very tough pitch. After the game, Ted was effusive with his praise of the pitch and told Warren it was one of the toughest pitches he had ever seen. It was almost unhittable. In the 1956 All-Star Game, in Washington, DC, Spahn faced Williams in the 6th inning with the NL leading 6-0. Nellie Fox had singled ahead of Ted, so Warren badly needed to get Ted out. He decided to try his "unhittable" pitch, and Ted parked it over the big right field fence in Grifith Stadium. Rounding second base, Ted looked at Spahn and grinned, and Warren knew he'd been had! He must have lost a little concentration, as Mickey Mantle, following Ted, went back-to-back and Warren was finished for the day. The NL won the game 7-3 but Spahn had learned a valuable lesson about Ted Williams devotion to hitting.

Who Ya Gonna Believe?

Me or your lying eyes?

Do you see the pink, green and blue spirals? The green ones and the blue ones are the same color. (From frolic with Volokh.)

Buck Earle

On the occasion of Father's Day of the centenary year of my father's birth I offer this tribute. I was 10 when he died suddenly at age 43 so I didn't know him well, but E. D. Broadhurst, who had a column for the local paper wrote about my father after his funeral in 1952. Much of what I know about my father's personality was in that article. It says some very nice things about Buck.

My father, who was also Elias Preston Earle and named for his father (and grandfather), was called "Buster" growing up, but as an adult this morphed to "Buck", the name by which everyone knew him. Though I barely remember him, he left me with a number of life lessons, some important, others less so.

He taught me to respect books, not just for their content but as books. Even today I find it almost impossible to throw away a hard-bound book.

He taught me to love baseball. I learned to read to read baseball articles in the summer of 1949. He had told me that he was in service with Ted Williams in WW II so I was always a Red Sox fan. Only later in life did I realize "in service with" meant Buck was on a destroyer in the Atlantic while Ted was a Marine aviator in the Pacific. If that was good enough for my dad, it was good enough for me.

He taught me the value of photography as a hobby. After a half-century of saving memories in pictures I realize how valuable this lesson was.

He taught me to keep my knife out of the jelly jar. We didn't have many rules around my house growing up, but if one of us (my two sisters or me) tried to use a knife (rather that a spoon) to reach into a jelly jar, we were sure to be rebuked. Even today I can't use a knife in a mayo jar without thinking of him.

I never heard my parents have a fight or heard my mother, Margaret, say a harsh thing about my father. On one occasion, about 15 years ago, she did mention one night what a spend-thrift he was--that he'd get paid on Friday and if she wasn't careful he'd have spent it all by Monday. She was very careful with money, and that was the lesson I learned. I often think I'd have been happier if I'd learned Buck's lesson rather than Margaret's.

Here is the Broadhurst column, As We See Them, from November 1952. I suspect we all wish we could be as well remembered when we're gone. Click to make it readable.

Start Small

If the Obama administration wants to manage the US auto industry, perhaps they should start with something smaller and simpler, like the pencil industry. Todd Zywicki cited this essay "I, Pencil" in a post on the Frolic-with-Volokh Conspiracy today.

On second thought, after reading the essay, maybe they should just leave both alone.

"My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!"

And this is just one small part. Read the whole thing.

Restaurant RIP

Ed Cone mentions the closing of the Madison Park Restaurant and Ged comments and links to some of his thoughts about restaurants dead and dying.

On a different note, one of my favorite writers, James Lileks, has a regular Monday feature on his blog The Bleat from his extensive collection of matchbook covers.

I've also collected matchbooks over the years and have somehow kept most of the last 30 years' specimens. Some time ago I took the time to scan and organize them and I'm surprised to see there are almost 400 of them. Included are almost 40 from Greensboro restaurants that are no longer with us. Some are greatly lamented, others less so. How many do you remember? As usual, click to see a larger version.

I'm really sorry that one of the unintended negative consequences of the war on tobacco is that we no longer have these wonderful reminders of things past.

Thinking about a Small Car?

If you're wondering what cars may look like after the new gas-mileage standards go into effect, you might want to look at some small cars of the present and past. In addition to the current Smart car or the Mini Cooper, there are the small cars of the past. Perhaps the smallest, the Peel p50, was tested by the BBC's Top Gear show here. Jeremy Clarkson drives a P50 to work and then takes it to work with him. I love the video of driving around the BBC. More on the P50 here and here.

Cecile

A half a century ago, when I was in junior high school and had just discovered which sex was opposite, I was badly smitten by the prettiest girl at Central Junior High School, Cecile Mayrand. I wasn't the only one though, as I think half the boys at Central felt the same way. I tried all through the eighth and ninth grades to get her attention but never could.

During the ninth grade Cecile's family moved to Winston-Salem but she stayed in Greensboro to finish the school year. During that summer we palled around some and by the end of the summer she seemed to notice me a bit--at least enough for me to start writing her in Winston.

We corresponded for the full year of the 10th grade. I'd write and wait anxiously for a response. In 1957, for a kid without a driver's license, Winston-Salem might as well have been Timbuktu--that 26 miles was a long way away.

I didn't see Cecile until I got my driver's license the next summer, and my first road trip was to see her. I drove to Winston and we dated several times that fall, but that was also the time I started dating Ann Winchester. After Ann and I began dating, I didn't go back to Winston but once or twice. Ann and I dated all through high school and college and got married when I graduated from Clemson in 1964.

I lost track of Cecile after high school, but I often thought of her. She sort of played the Suzanne Somers role (the mysterious blond in the Thunderbird) in my personal American Graffiti. When I asked old friends, of folks from Winston, about her, no one knew much about her after high school. Someone said they thought she had married a doctor; someone else said they thought she was living in Hawaii. I often wondered what happened to her.

In the late nineties, things looked up for finding out about her when Google came along, but not knowing her married name was a real drawback. Googling for "Cecile Mayrand" brought up a lot of references for various French-Canadians, but nothing about the correct Cecile

Then last year, after Glenn Reynolds wrote about Will Lavender's mystery Obedience, which has a very intriguing prologue (see it here) I tried Google again, and there, thanks to Google Books, was a reference to Phillip Mayrand and his sister Cecile Broadhurst in a book about the history of Topsail Island where the Mayrands owned property. So with a current last name, it was easy to find her current address

I wrote her the first of the year to see if she remembered me, and she did. She answered my letter and filled in some of the details of her life: She had married a doctor, and had lived in Hawaii, but had moved back to NC when she and her first husband separated a number of years ago. She remarried in 1987 and has moved to Topsail Island where she and husband Ed Broadhurst live next to the Gold Hole there).

While visiting some friends in Morehead City over Memorial day, I made a side trip and had a very nice lunch with Cecile and Ed in Topsail Island. We renewed old friendships and talked about our lives over the past 50 years--a very nice day. If Garrison Keillor were writing this, he'd find a nice poignant heart-warming ending, but real life is a little different. It was just a very pleasant lunch and chat. I hope we can see each other again.

Here is another picture of Cecile in junior high school, with some other friends of the period: Cecile, Mike Thompson, me, and Ann Kluttz on the first row and Scottie Troxler, Mike (Tom) Cribbin, Martha Watson, Cricket Conner, Laurie Lamb, and Charles Howell on the back row.

Here are two pictures from this weekend, of Cecile and Ed and of Cecile and me. I don't think either of us has changed much, do you?

"No Larger Nation"– A Tribute to Ireland

On the occurrence of St Patrick's day just past, I offer this tribute to Ireland. President Kennedy gave this speech to the Irish Parlaiment (Dail) in 1963. It's almost 50 years old, but it still rings true. It's worth the 25-min it takes to listen, or just read the text. Two excerpts:

The 13th day of September, 1862, will be a day long remembered in American history. At Fredericksburg, Maryland, thousands of men fought and died on one of the bloodiest battlefields of the American Civil War. One of the most brilliant stories of that day was written by a band of 1200 men who went into battle wearing a green sprig in their hats. They bore a proud heritage and a special courage, given to those who had long fought for the cause of freedom. I am referring, of course, to the Irish Brigade. General Robert E. Lee, the great military leader of the Southern Confederate Forces, said of this group of men after the battle, "The gallant stand which this bold brigade made on the heights of Fredericksburg is well known. Never were men so brave. They ennobled their race by their splendid gallantry on that desperate occasion. Their brilliant though hopeless assaults on our lines excited the hearty applause of our officers and soldiers."

and

"All the world owes much to the little 'five feet high' nations. The greatest art of the world was the work of little nations. The most enduring literature of the world came from little nations. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. And oh, yes, the salvation of mankind came through a little nation."

Ireland has already set an example and a standard for other small nations to follow.

This has never been a rich or powerful country, and yet, since earliest times, its influence on the world has been rich and powerful. No larger nation did more to keep Christianity and Western culture alive in their darkest centuries. No larger nation did more to spark the cause of independence in America, indeed, around the world. And no larger nation has ever provided the world with more literary and artistic genius.

This is an extraordinary country. George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life: Other people, he said "see things and say 'Why?' . . . But I dream things that never were -- and I say: 'Why not?'"

When Is a Basketball Lead Safe?

See Here.

I have never personally seen a game in which a team lost after having a safe lead. In February 1994, LSU led Kentucky by 31 with 15:30 left to play, only to see Kentucky rally for a 99-95 victory. That was impressive, but a 31-point lead without the ball is safe for 12:36. The lead was 81 percent safe. And then this year, LSU blew a 15-point lead to Villanova with 2:59 to go—which, again, is close but no kewpie doll. With 179 seconds to play you need a 13.5-point margin, which means a 16-point lead with the ball or 17 without. The curse of Dale Brown. Actually, I would guess Dale was cursing up a storm when that happened.

My editor, doing his due diligence, found one game in which a team lost after holding a safe lead. On March 2, 1974, North Carolina trailed Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds to play—a safe lead for Duke. Duke had repeated misadventures in in-bounding the basketball and wound up losing the game in overtime. That was before the human typo was hired to coach Duke, but ... does anybody know where I could get a tape of that game?

Nathanael Greene and the Cat That Started the Civil War

Ed Cone reminds us today is the 228th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Most of us don't know much about General Greene's life and even less about his legacy, particularly his tie to the Civil War. The Georgia Encyclopedia tells us some of his later life.

Greene willingly gave much of his personal wealth to help support the war, even sacrificing his Rhode Island home. To thank him for his service during the war, the Georgia government gave Greene a plantation named Mulberry Grove, outside Savannah in Chatham County. He lived on the Mulberry Grove estate for less than a year, troubled by insecure finances; the plantation did not become profitable. Greene died unexpectedly of sunstroke in 1786, at the age of forty-four. Greene's remains and those of his son, George Washington Greene, lie beneath a monument in Johnson Square in Savannah.

After Greene's death, a young Yale University graduate, Eli Whitney, came to Savannah to take a tutoring job. Whitney began working for Greene's widow, Catharine, and it was at Mulberry Grove that Whitney invented the cotton gin, the machine that revolutionized the production of cotton.

In fact, Whitney met Mrs. Greene on a ship from Rhode Island to Georgia when he was moving to take the teaching job and she was going to remarry. They struck up a friendship, and when he discovered that the pay for the teaching job was half what he had been promised, she offered to let him live at Mulberry Plantation while he decided what to do next.

At Mulberry Grove, much of the evening conversation was about the difficult economic situation plantation owners faced. At that point in US history, slavery was a dying enterprise. Slaves were expensive to keep and there was little profitable work for them to do. The market for local crops, indigo and rice, would not support large plantations, and though growing cotton was a possibility, it was too expensive separating the cotton seeds from the fiber to make the crop profitable.

A few days later, Whitney was in the plantation barnyard watching a cat try to catch a chicken through a wire fence. Each time the cat would reach through the fence for the chicken, all he would bring back was a paw-full of feathers. This lit the bulb in Whitney's imagination and he realized that folks were trying to solve the wrong problem with cotton. The solution wasn't separating the seeds from the cotton fiber, it was separating the fibers from the seeds. He devised a screen-wire basket in which a roller with small picks would pull the fibers through the screen leaving the seeds on the other side. This became his Cotton Engine and was an immediate success throughout the cotton-growing regions of the south. This drove a huge demand for field labor in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and lead to a great transfer of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas, greatly upsetting slave families and leading to the upheaval that lead to the Civil War some sixth years later.

Had Whitney not seen that cat, who knows what would have happened in American history. This is why a cat should be credited with starting the Civil War.

I Miss W.

From the Blogfather

“From Election Day 2000 to Election Day 2008, the S&P 500 fell 29.8%. From Election Day 2008 til this afternoon, it’s down 33.3%.”

Bumper sticker here.

A Modest Proposal for The Real ACC Tournament

Next week we will celebrate the basketball tournament between the all-but-professional athletes representing the 12 schools of the ACC. I think we should have a chance to see which school has the best student basketball players. I propose The Real ACC Tournament!

• Let's plan it for April, after the big dance.

• Let's invite each school to send its 12 best student basketball players: students who are not receiving any athletic scholarship money.

• Each team should be coached by the school's regular basketball coach. We can see who might be the best coach, as opposed to the best recruiter.

• Let them play real rules, with real officials, etc. to keep everything on the up-and-up.

• To save money, we don't need fancy uniforms or anything like that. Let them play in whatever shorts the players prefer, and distinguish the sides by playing shirts-vs-skins. If this tournament is successful and leads to a women's version, this part alone would assure a sell-out in any arena in the area.

• The tournament could be concluded in three days, since the games, without the interruption of TV timeouts, etc., would only take 90-min or so to complete.

• Surely we can find the money required to fund this in the $700.000.000 the government wants to spend on stimulus. I know it would stimulate me.

After Mitch Johnson, What Next?

I wrote about my thoughts on the Greensboro city management situation here, and offered thoughts as to what the council should do. Last night the council ran right through steps One and Two and landed us directly at step Three. After Mitch, the council must now work to get the city back on track. I offer these further thoughts:

1. We need a strong, professional city manager. I don't know Roger Cotton. Maybe he is the right person for the job. In today's economic climate there must be many professional managers available, even if they do not come from a governmental management background. The city should cast a wide net to find the best candidate. Whoever is chosen should have some sort of employment contract beyond a month-to-month 5-4 vote of confidence from the City Council.

2. We need a strong mayor. Yvonne Johnson isn't it. She seems a competent consensus builder, but she seems unable to lead the council in any direction it needs to go. The Council would do better with her as a member, not as the Mayor.

3. We need a better, less racially-oriented council. Surely there are better candidates in Districts One and Two than we've seen in the past several elections. To TDB Small, everything seems to have a strong racial overtone, whether it is the city manager's performance, the state of sidewalks and curb-and-gutters. or the entrance to City Gardens. The district and the city deserve better.

4. I'm thinking experience may be an over-rated attribute on Council. I have a lot of respect for Robbie Perkins, but it is disconcerting that as late as last night he could not see how poor Mitch was as a manger. If Robbie is bought-and-paid-for by special interests in town, we need better. I have been very impressed with Bill Knight and his approach to city problems over the past couple of years. His perspective as a "numbers guy" is badly needed on council, and he seems to have the proper temperament as a civic leader. I hope he will again seek a council spot in the next election.

5. I don't know that it was necessarily a bad thing that two members of the Pulpit Forum chose to speak in support of Mitch last night, but it is worrisome if Mitch's departure is seen only in a racial light. IMHO, Mitch committed several firing offenses. He improperly painted the "black book" issue in racial terms to "get" David Wray. He badly mismanaged the termination of Wray. He badly mismanaged the Taping of Black Leaders issue. He allowed the witch hunt that resulted in Scott Sanders trial. At the meeting last night, there was a little discussion of the city staff not following the Council's directions (on the Jordan Lake rules). What the staff does is Mitch's responsibility. If he won't get them to follow council policies, he shouldn't be City Manager. It doesn't have to be Racial.

6. We must get beyond the black/white victim/oppressor mindset. Not every injustice and inequity is rooted in racial issues. Sometimes it's bad luck, bad precedence, and incompetence. Thinking all problems are racial is counter-productive.

First-Ladies Gone Wild

There has been some buzz among fashionistas about Michelle Obama's recent sleeveless stylings. I've seen pieces about this on the Today Show last week and Good Morning America this morning. Both features made an issue of her work-out regime contributing to her toned arms. There is even a blog post on the subject.

All this reminds me of an important exercise principle I learned some time ago: Fat doesn't belong to the muscles around it. You can't lose belly fat by doing sit-ups or lose arm fat by doing arm exercises. You have to lose fat overall to lose fat in any particular spot on your body. Fat comes off sort of in reverse order of how it went on. Arm exercises are good, but they won't cause arm fat to go away.

The Crappiest Generation

of spoiled idiots

Some Sensible Thoughts on the Housing Crisis

Ann Althouse pointed to this article "I Bought an Expensive House. My Bad, Not Yours" by Joel Stein in Time Magazine. I think it makes a lot of sense.

"The only people affected by plummeting real estate prices are the ones who bought a house that cost more than they could afford, hoping for a spike in value so they could sell at a profit or take out a new loan based on an increased value. Their home wasn't just a place to live; it was an investment they thought they could liquefy at will. If we're saving these poor souls from the 26.7% drop in their investment, we should give twice as much aid to everyone who has lost approximately 50% in the stock market since its peak."

Thoughts On the Solution to the Mess in Greensboro

I don't usually write about politics, particularly on a local level. There are lots of other folks who do a very good job of that. I'm making an exception in this post.

An editorial in the WSJ this morning on a different subject quotes federal judge Laurence Silberman: "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends." He was speaking of some of J. Edgar Hoover's actions at the FBI, but it applies to two more recent events, the Duke lacrosse mess in Durham and the Scott Sanders trial here this week. It also applies to the enter David Wray situation.

I've commented at Gaurino's place about this whole mess, and advocated the removal of Mitch Johnson as Greensboro City Manager. But on further thought, I don't believe that is the real solution to this matter. There are cries from lots of folks that we should just move on now, and I don't think that is the right path either.

I'm reminded of a person who, after having some physical symptoms, visits his doctor and finds he has a serious medical condition. The man has several possible courses of action:

1. He can ignore the symptoms and begin to live a better live-style, perhaps eating more healthily, getting more exercise, cutting back on drinking and smoking, etc. These are all good things to do, but none will help his underlying problem. This is the equivalent of the city "just moving on."

2. He can just treat the symptoms, and with the state of medicine today he may well be able to make them seem to go away, but this doesn't cure the underlying condition either. I think this is the equivalent of replacing Mitch Johnson, and perhaps even Tim Bellemy, and maybe even some political leadership, but the basic problem will still be there.

3. He can take whatever treatment steps are required to cure or arrest the condition causing all the problems. These may be difficult and unpleasant, but it the only way to cure the real problem. I don't know what these actual steps are. I'm not a doctor, or a politician, but I believe the people at the head of our city government, the city administration, and the various other groups and organizations that are interested in making this a better city must identify and implement these solutions.

When the Wray Fray first began, I thought it was basically a labor/management dispute over rotating police work schedules. As time went by, there appeared to be a significant racial tint to that dispute as well. I believe it was Sam Spagnola who first proposed the theory that the Fray was a continuation of the Project Homestead problem and the desire of certain powers-that-be to see Project Homestead just go away not be re-opened and examined. Again, there was a strong racial aspect. Other folks have voiced the thought that there is some other yet untold conspiracy orchestrated by some other unidentified group that is behind all this.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that just moving on or just replacing certain management and political leaders is not the right path. We need Leadership – new people with the ability to identify problems, craft solutions, and manage their implementation. If these people aren't currently in the proper roles, we need to find the right people and get them installed. Otherwise we'll still be writing about these problems in five years but to a much smaller audience.

Having Car Trouble?

Maybe this will help, particularly if the trouble involves fiery explosions. "The guys really like fiery explosions."

Want to Go to the ACC Tournament?

Over at Ed Cone's he reports that tickets might be available for mere mortals for this year's ACC tournament in the Georgia Dome. This reminds me of one of Preston's Laws: "Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should." I went to the first ACC tourney in Atlanta (1983, I think) at the Omni Center. Our seats weren't great, but they weren't terrible either.

It could have been worse. Here is the view from the upper balcony:

But this year the tournament is not in the Omni, it's in the Georgia Dome a much larger venue. Here is the layout for basketball. Note that this shows just one end of the field, where the court is located.

I went to the SEC football Championship game in the Georgia Dome in 2007, and here are some views to show what the Georgia Dome interior looks like. The basketball court will be at the other end of the field in this view.

This is the view from our seats in section 132, row 31. These would be pretty good seats for basketball. They could be much worse.

Of course, if the games are exciting and some fans stand up, this is what the view will be like.

If you go to the Tournament, I hope you have a good time. I think Keith has a better idea.

Happy Valentine's Day

I was somewhat otherwise occupied this weekend, so I pretty much missed Valentine's day. I missed James Taranto's post about Valentine's Day (scroll down to "Heart Attacks") which references this WSJ article about various protests over St. V's day. Taranto writes mostly about Arab pushback against the Love Holiday and ignores Jewish resistance. On the other hand, at least the blogfather offers an alternative. I hope missing the big day because I was otherwise occupied doesn't disqualify me from the men's version of Valentine's day come March 14.

Happy Friday the 13th

I don't usually worry too much about Friday the 13th's but I may change my mind. I've been having some medical symptoms. A visit with my cardiologist showed everything OK heartwise, so I visited my regular doctor Wednesday to look into other possibilities and he ordered a number of blood tests. At lunch Friday his nurse called and asked me to come by their office late Friday pm. The doctor wanted to discuss my lab results.

No Problem. Except when I got there, they measured my blood pressure and got a reading of something like 87/44 and everybody got a little excited. The doctor reported that a number of my blood enzymes were out of whack (not his precise medical term, but close) and he wanted to admit me to Cone Hospital to do some tests before I died of kidney failure over the week-end (or at least that's what it sounded like he said). I hadn't seen James Lileks' Bleat column on Friday so I'd missed his warning about kidneys, but the doctor had gotten my attention.

I spent two days getting poked, prodded and punctured courtesy of Medicare and AARP (I hope). Everything was normal (except for some catheter excitement) and they found no significant issues, so we'll continue to look into the "symptoms", and I will be much more respectful of Friday-the-13th's in the future.

News & Record Makes Another Big Mistake

The News & Record had another big error in a headline this morning. I'm not talking about the page A-1 head about the Cathy Vance surveillance taping, or the B-1 head on the article about the Scott Sanders trial. I'm talking about the C-2 headline "Lawson to the rescue" headline over the UNC-Miami basketball game article.

I didn't watch the game but I did see the highlights (numerous times) on SportsCenter. Ty Lawson wasn't the key to the game; the key was the performance of officials John Cahill, Sean Hull, and Mike Kitts. The key play occurred with 42 seconds left in the game with Miami down one point and having possession of the ball. Tyler Hansborough drew a charging call which gave the Heels the ball and led to Lawson's last 3-pointer.

My friend Sam Croft used to be an ACC referee and I'd kid him that at least he had a 50:50 chance of getting the block/charge call right. He'd remind me it was worse than that. Actually he had only a one in three chance of being right. The third option was "no call".

I don't pretend to know whether the Hansborough call at the end of the game was correct or not, but I do see that UNC made seven of eight free throws, while Miami was only two for two in free throws. This sounds to me like the headline should have been "Cahill/Hull/Kitts to the rescue".

Party Like It's 1993!

Will Collier at Vodkapundit had an interesting post last week recalling the halcyon days of the early 1990's and the first Bill Clinton term in office:

"After campaigning for a year and a half decrying “the worst economy in the last 50 years”–despite the fact that the mild recession of 1990-91 actually ended in March of ‘91–one of Bill Clinton’s first priorities was to try and ram through (wait for it) a “stimulus package.” Back in those days, politicians hadn’t yet realized that they could add another three zeroes to their raids on everybody else’s pockets, so the Clinton bill was by today’s outlandish standards relatively modest, starting at a mere $30 billion dollars. Most of that was sold as “targeted stimulus,” which meant it was carefully targeted to pay off Democratic grandees and constituencies that had contributed to the 1992 campaign."

and

"The Clinton “stimulus” bill failed, going down to final defeat on April 22, 1993. It was never revived. As we all know, the American economy never recovered–oh, wait, that’s not correct. A year later, despite the non-presence of a federal “stimulus” law, unemployment had dropped from 7.1% to to 6.6%. Tyson’s growth prediction was not quite correct, either; the US GDP positively boomed in the fourth quarter of 1993 to the tune of 5.5%, and rose by 4% in 1994–all without the help of Clinton’s “stimulus” package.

"The boom accelerated in the second half of the decade, with the greatest gains being realized from 1995 onwards–after the Democrats had been swept out of Congressional power, and as a result, Clinton’s penchants for tax hikes and big spending packages were effectively neutered. There were no grand “stimulus” packages from that point on, only good, old-fashioned gridlock that kept the government from raising taxes or spending to outrageous excess."

He concludes "All of this has happened before . . . and if we’re very lucky, all of this will happen again."

"I say let's roll the dice . . ."

A number of folks have talked about the reluctance of local governments to respond promptly and fully to public document requests. During the Ben Holder Show at the recent city council meeting, Mike Barber addressed this subject with a recommendation that the city should be much more pro-active in responding to requests (see about the 8'30" mark in Ben's first video). Mike talked about the need to be more responsive to document requests and suggested the city take more risk in releasing documents.

On Wednesday the Blogfather referenced an article which lead to this where we learned that King County (Seattle) is facing perhaps nearly a million dollars in fines because it delayed in releasing public documents.

"The state Supreme Court has ruled that a $124,000 fine paid by King County for blatant violations of the state Public Records Act isn't nearly enough, and has sent the case back to Superior Court with a recommendation to increase the penalty."

"In 1997, Yousoufian asked the office of County Executive Ron Sims for copies of studies pertaining to the impact of the proposed $300 million Seahawks stadium. County residents were about to vote on a referendum to pay for Qwest Field."

"Yousoufian's attorney, Michael Brannan, said he'll ask the trial court to impose the maximum penalty: $825,200. That would equal $100 a day for each of the 8,252 days the trial court said the county violated the law."

If there is a risk in releasing documents too liberally, as Mike alleges, there is also a risk in the opposite action. Of course, we're a long way from the Seattle stage as of today, but we're getting closer every day the city behaves ostrich-like in reacting to these document requests.

I thought it was also interesting that during this discussion no one on City Council addressed any comment to the one person who could resolve this matter--the person charged with actually running the city: Mitch Johnson. Everyone on Council spoke in support of "getting the truth out", but no one addressed any comment to Mitch, who seemed to just sit there tar-baby-like.

There was considerable discussion about releasing the content of the tapes, but I believe Ben's primary concern was not the actual content of the tapes but the fact the city has continued to say the taping was part of an overt police investigation when subsequent facts have shown that isn't true, but the city won't admit it. Why not?

Whores

Folks say that it isn't your enemies telling lies about you that you should worry about, it's your friends telling the truth. I was reminded of this after I read Powerline's recent attack on Tom Daschle. I don't usually read Glen Greenwald, but the blogfather referenced this article which quotes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

"In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate."

Them's harsh words. Whore, indeed!

To their credit, both the New York Times and Ed Cone have called for Daschle to withdraw. I thought that had happened this morning when I saw this headline: "Tax issues prompt Obama nominee to withdraw" but it turned out to be a different Obama nominee.

I saw this store-front last week on High Point Road. It looks like they are selling them in big-box stores now.

I Forgot!

Sue Polinsky laments having to pay taxes. Doesn't everyone. Perhaps Sue should do what other loyal democrats do: just don't pay them. See Rangel, Geithner, and Daschle for more details.The Daschle case is particularly worrying. According to the WSJ article, he recently paid some $140,000 in back taxes for 2005-2007 that

". . . reflected unreported income from the use of the car service valued at $255,256 for those three years, according to the Finance Committee report. He also amended his returns to cover $83,333 in unreported consulting income for 2007. And he reduced his charitable contributions by $14,963."

Now, that car service averages $7,000 per month which seems pretty ritzy, and forgetting $80,000 in income and fibbing about $15,000 in charitable contributions doesn't seem to be the kind of behavior I'd want someone who is in charge of reforming our health-care mess to exhibit. I'd much prefer an honest man in that position!

Beverly Perdue's Shovel

Piedmont Publicus blog is a little miffed at Gov. Perdue and the phrase "Shovel Ready". Perhaps he needs to take a look at this:

It's from this blog post, and it isn't what it seems.

Dip, Don't Puff

In his on-going battle against mis-information in the News-Record's LTE section, Roch Smith can be forgiven if he misses today's letter from Ted Eaves on the health effects of smokeless tobacco compared to cigarettes. While not factually incorrect, the letter's premise is wrong. Smokeless tobacco is much safer than smoking cigarettes. A quick google search brings up this paper as one source on a study of the relative risks of dipping vs. puffing.

"There is no doubt that Western smokeless tobacco products are substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes (notwithstanding certain recent high-profile statements by a certain high-profile official from this state). Even with the worst case scenario supported by the research, ST is in the order of 1/100 as likely to cause life-threatening disease, and the best estimates for the true value for modern moist snuff, the most popular product, are lower still. Smoking cigarettes is a well established cause of many diseases and is widely described as the largest theoretically) preventable source of premature mortality. ST, by contrast, has mostly been linked to risk for only one relatively rare life-threatening disease, oral cancer. Even that link is tenuous, based largely on a single study by Winn et al. (1981).

"The negative health implications of preventing people from realizing that smokeless tobacco is relatively safe should not be underestimated. Smokeless tobacco users are told, in effect, that they might as well switch to smoking if they find they enjoy it a bit more or it is more convenient. The much larger population of smokers is told, in effect, that they cannot use tobacco in a relatively safe way, a message that is often characterized as "quit or die." It is extremely difficult for anyone to deliver the harm reduction message in the face of the widespread misperception that is fueled by the misinformation. At this point, we can only speculate about how many smokers would take advantage of this opportunity to reduce their risk by two orders of magnitude or more."