How About A Little Love For Our Astros?

Regarding "Aiken’s Tommy John operation doesn’t make club right or wrong" (Saturday Sports C9), sports writer Evan Drellich seems to go out of his way to deny the Astros any closure for the way they handled negotiations with their number one draft choice last year, pitcher Brady Aitken.

Drellich speculates endlessly about the reason that the Astros didn't sign Aitken, including the actual condition of Aitken's elbow, the outcome of his recent Tommy John surgery, what he was thinking, what his agent was thinking, what the Astros were thinking, ad infinitum.

But his mighty labors seem to have only one purpose: to deny giving the Astros any credit for their decision to reduce the signing bonus that killed the deal.  Last year before all the facts were known, this was the hot topic, and the players union and national sports press made Jim Crane and the Astros out to be bad guys for reducing their offer.  There was nary a sportswriter in Houston that defended them.  

The fact is that the Astros thought Aitken was damaged goods, events proved them to be correct, and there are 29 other MLB teams that think likewise.  It's time to give the Astros props for not just being good negotiators, but stand up guys.

It's also time for Houston sportswriters to unclutter their narrative and say that.

Pete Smith

Houston, TX

LTE chron.com: Internet Control

Regarding "Challenges loom over rules for net neutrality" (Friday Business), with this effort by the Obama administration to take over the Internet by declaring it a public utility, one must ask: is there any limit on the ambitions of the Democrats to regulate everything?  The answer, I believe in this case, is yes.  Unlike, say, America's health care system, the Internet is a transnational colossus that inconveniently spills far beyond America's borders, much less its influence.

I'm looking forward to the first attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to dictate to China precisely how much bandwidth will be allocated by one of its providers to American consumers, or by an American provider to Chinese consumers, much less the hundreds of other sovereign nations that currently host the Internet.  

Our bureaucrats are way overdue for some comeuppance.  This will be it.

Pete Smith

Houston, TX

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Internet control

Regarding "Challenges loom over rules for net neutrality" (Page D1, Friday), with this effort by the Obama administration to take over the Internet by declaring it a public utility, one must ask: Is there any limit on the ambitions of the Democrats to regulate everything? The answer, I believe in this case, is: Yes. Unlike, say, America's health care system, the Internet is a transnational colossus that inconveniently spills far beyond America's borders, much less its influence.

I'm looking forward to the first attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to dictate to China precisely how much bandwidth will be allocated by one of its providers to U.S. consumers, or by an American provider to Chinese consumers, much less the hundreds of other sovereign nations that currently host the Internet. Our bureaucrats are way overdue for some comeuppance. This will be it.

Pete Smith, Houston

Dr. Tim and Bjork

Regarding "He mind-melds with Björk" (Sunday pg G3), at first I couldn't decide if the article was parody or not.  After all, a story about a self-absorbed university professor communing with the the biggest flake in pop music so as to achieve a higher state of consciousness just cries out for parody.

Take the opening sentence: "The first time I met Rice University professor Timothy Morton, we were in a party of 50 or so, consuming blue-green algae water and sardine skeleton chips during artist Marina Zurkow’s conceptual dinner “Outside the Work: A Tasting of Hydrocarbons and Geologic Time.”"

Is there anything about this passage that is not precious?  Without reading further, all I wanted to do was bundle writer Molly Glentzer, Dr. Tim, Bjork and as many conceptual dinner throwers as could fit into my seaweed-fueled Volkswagen micro bus for a trip to either a hermetically sealed bubble where they could sustain the vibe indefinitely, or directly onto the "Further", Ken Kesey's bus of slightly larger dimensions so that they, Ken and the Merry Pranksters could expand the Eco-Babble vocabulary, courtesy of the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Decisions, decisions.

In the end, I decided to simply flog my way through the rest of the article, and it was some tough sledding.  Professor Tim - holder of the Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University - turned out be nothing but an existential celebrity Fan Boy, and a near-incoherent one at that, leaving one to wonder exactly what Rita Shea Guffey could possibly have been thinking.  The rest of the article was a melange of references to hip parties and obscure concepts that none of us will ever be invited to or take the time to Google.  

I began to despair as to whether Molly Glentzer would be able to tie it all together, when towards the end she told the story of Dr. Tim complimenting Bjork over some aspect of the show, and Bjork's reply: “Yeah, it’s a bit ‘Thousand Plateaus,’ isn’t it?”  Dr. Tim's mind was blown by Bjork's ability to reference an obscure "philosophy concept from the 1970s".  Mine was blown by the fact that a university professor could transform himself so completely from a respected academic to a gushing teenage girl, and still call it scholarship.

Pete Smith

Houston, TX