As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)
[R]ight now, the Detroit Three automakers shoulder about $64
per hour per worker, including all wages and benefits. The UAW’s suite of
compensation-related demands would roughly double that total hourly
labor bill to about $130, according to calculations from Colin Langan, an
analyst at Wells Fargo.
Now consider these firms’ competitors. Foreign automakers
operating in the United States (Toyota, Hyundai, etc.) pay their workers about
$55 per hour all in. Tesla is estimated to pay workers somewhere in the
mid-$40s.
In other words, the legacy manufacturers are already at a
significant cost disadvantage compared with their biggest competitors. Doubling
employees’ total compensation costs would make them even less competitive.
“There’s only one race-neutral method that would work to
increase racial diversity on selective college campuses, and it happens to
align with the supposed social-justice goals of highly selective schools:
giving a clearly defined, substantial boost to low-income applicants. Neither
the University of Michigan nor the University of California embraced that
method, and so far, it seems likely that no other university will try it
either.”
The good news for the day was that the weather wasn’t as bad
as it might have been. While Friday’s game had a late-inning rain delay of 1:34
and Saturday’s “afternoon” game (scheduled 4:05 start) began 4:10 late and went
into extra innings to boot, today’s mid-game delay lasted a mere 58 minutes.
There was very little good news baseball-wise. Struggling
Nats starting pitcher (almost a redundant phrase) Trevor Williams gave up two
runs in the top of the first inning, meaning that the home team started from
behind in every game of this just-completed 9-game home stand. Things only went
downhill from there, as the Dodgers scored twice more in the top of the second.
The Nats did show some signs of life in the bottom of the fourth, when they
loaded the bases on three singles and rookie catcher Drew Millas plated two of
them with another hit.
The rain started shortly thereafter. Williams proceeded to
load the bases with one out in the top of the fifth, on two walks sandwiched
around a single. By that point, Williams was over 100 pitches and Davey had
seen enough, bringing in Mason Thompson as the rain got harder. Shortly after
Thompson allowed another base hit, it was pouring, and the umpires stopped the
game. We waited things out at one of the picnic tables, under cover. When the
action resumed, Thompson allowed another inherited runner to score on a
sacrifice fly.
Former Nationals reliever Wander Suero, just called back up
from Oklahoma City, came in to pitch for LA in the bottom of the fifth, and
wound up being the winning pitcher, since Dodgers opener Ryan Yarbrough didn’t
return after the rain and therefore didn’t pitch the necessary five inning to
get credit for the win himself. At that point, three hours after the game
started, we decided to call it a day, at least in part because the forecasts called
for even more rain in the next hour or two. (It turns out they were wrong.)
Nationals reliever Joe La Sorsa, who’s spend the season bouncing
back and forth between the majors and various minor league stops, does deserve
credit for coming in after Thompson and dialing up 3.2 scoreless innings,
saving considerable wear and tear on the rest of Washington’s overworked
bullpen.
Metro was uneventful in both directions. We picked up subs again,
and arrived early enough at the park for one of us (not me) to participate in Signature Sunday.
