dougcooke.com

In Memory of
Anthony Richard Dawson

1969-2001

Richard lived a fulfilled life, one full of family, friends, food, drink, sleep, and good times. He was a man’s man: one who men wanted to be, and women wanted to be with. Despite his many admirers, he had a strong work ethic, and enjoyed a fine career. He was said by some to have singlehandedly kept the wheels of the economy turning, which may have been true, considering the downturn the economy took without him.

Richard’s career began by earning a degree in electronics with distinction at Southampton University. He became a competent software engineer for many years before realizing that he not only had sound technical knowledge, but sharp business acumen. He ascended into project management and then became a Product Manager, where he could fully combine excellent communication and marketing skills with his vast technical insight. He was a strong leader and speaker, who rightly earned the respect of colleagues, superiors and subordinates alike.

In his personal life, some of which crossed over with his colleagues, he was the life of the party. One friend mentioned that “Richard was the star around which we all seemed to orbit.” This friend would go to Richard’s house for a party and end up doing all his housework, willingly. He enjoyed good times with friends over drinks and lard, without a reason to celebrate besides life itself. Speaking of food and drink, his friends even began a group which they named in his honor, still alive today at www.lards.net.

But Richard was not just a man to hang out with; he also had a soft heart. He left behind a girlfriend who loved him dearly, and whom he loved just as much. Having worked in an office together, they had a secret code with their eyelids so that colleagues would not witness their affection. If caught, Richard would claim a problem with his contact lenses. He once bought his girlfriend a necklace with three diamonds: one stating he fell in love, another that he was still in love, and the third signifying that he would always love her.

Richard loved to travel in style. Using his excellent negotiation skills and charm, he would often upgrade to first class travel on airplanes. He would then use that opportunity to order beverages and send emails to his friends and colleagues joking about how rough he had it. But none were envious, because he made them feel better about themselves, and they all loved him for it.

Richard Dawson was taken from us on September 11, 2001, but his memory lives on in the hearts and minds of all of his colleagues, family, and friends, as his soul is bound for heaven. His cousin wrote a beautiful poem in his remembrance, which will serve as the coda for this tribute.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned;
Only remember me; you understand
It will be too late to counsel then or pray,
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

In Memoriam
Anthony Richard Dawson
MMIX

Today I was happy to finally watch the Hokies take the field so they could disprove all the surrounding hype and #7 preseason rank, which they did quite admirably. I’m still confused as to how VT can lose a game when they mustered 156 yards of offense and held their opponent to only 485 yards. In addition, Tech averaged 2.4 yards per play on offense compared to only 5.3 for Alabama. The resulting 34-24 loss is dumbfounding, since it should have been 34-14, or worse.

While I was admiring the way Va Tech stayed in a game they had no business in, even leading it at half time, I missed the entire upset of OK by BYU. I can’t say I was surprised at all, since I had heard Bradford went out of the game, and BYU was a decent team to begin with. Fortunately we have networks like ESPN De Ocho where I can watch the classic upset tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever I feel like watching it after setting the DVR to record the rerun.

By the way, how many times will Navy scare a top ranked team and come close to beating them, to only fall short in the end and lose anyway? By calculation of past happenstances of that situation, I project approximately 100 more times over the next season.

I also have admiration for the teams of LSU and Washington, who have played their their entire game in an earthquake. It’s difficult enough just watching the picture shaking up and down, but imagine if you were actually on that field!

As I fall asleep watching Maryland get annihilated by Cal, I will find solace in the fact that Va Tech is still in first place in the ACC until Monday night, when FSU or Miami will notch the first conference victory. Perhaps they will have pity on us and tie…

Here’s my new avatar

In case you’re wondering who the best three year old horse is, let’s take an objective look. The speed figures will tell you all about how Quality Road and Dunkirk were fast as cheetahs in the Florida Derby, and how I Want Revenge freaked out in the Gotham. These are fair analyses, but in this study we will throw out speed figures and fractions and the like, and concentrate on simple logic and class.

Having mentioned him already, let’s start with Quality Road, and examine his competition. In his recent Florida Derby romp he beat Dunkirk. No other Kentucky Derby contenders were involved, although I still believe Theregoesjojo could have been a contender had he a.) Raced outside of Gulfstream Park, and b.) Not had such a silly name. No offense to Funny Cide.

It needs to be mentioned that last year’s Derby champion Big Brown also beat nobody in his Florida Derby romp. Trainer James Jerkens is looking to take the same path. Although Big Brown’s quarter crack did not develop until after the Belmont, Quality Road is on the fast track with that one. The crack was declared minor but is a major concern for a Derby competitor.

Todd Pletcher tried to follow Big Brown’s exact footsteps with Dunkirk by winning the Florida Derby in his 3^rd lifetime start. Dunkirk has beaten nobody other than the aforementioned Theregoesjojo, but it was a nice try in the Florida Derby. Dunkirk’s two previous starts resulted in victories in an allowance and a maiden race. We need some more credentials.

I Want Revenge is a compelling name for a horse running for The Roses. His sire was Stephen Got Even, son of Belmont Winner AP Indy, so another furlong should not be a problem. However, neither AP Indy nor any of his progeny have won the Derby. After failing to win two graded stakes races over polytrack in CA, trainer Jeff Mullins shipped this horse to the Aqueduct in NY to run in the Gotham, where he freaked out and won by eight lengths under young upstart Joe Talamo.

Talamo followed that up with an incredible performance in the Wood, also at Aqueduct, where despite breaking poorly and finding himself walled behind horses for most of the race, I Want Revenge ran down rivals late in the stretch, where he finally found a hole, to win by 1.5 lengths. West Side Bernie managed second, after being passed by the winner in mid stretch as if he were standing still.

Papa Clem, by Smart Strike, shipped over to the southeast after running second in the RB Lewis G2 over the Santa Anita polytrack. Even though he failed to come close to catching Friesan Fire over a sloppy track in the Louisiana Derby, the trip proved to be worthwhile. In his next race, the Gary Stute trainee managed to capture the Arkansas Derby under Rafael Bejarano, beating Larry Jones’ Old Fashioned, a previous Derby contender.

Trainer Larry Jones decided to give the month of April off to Friesan Fire, satisfied with his dominant performances in the Lecomte, Risen Star, and Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds. In addition the AP Indy colt continues to improve with every start for rider Gabriel Saez. The only question left is whether he will take to the dirt at Churchill Downs in the same way as he did at New Orleans. Recall that he beat Papa Clem in his Louisiana Derby victory in the slop.

This brings us to the west coast dominator, Pioneer of the Nile, who has done nothing but win his past four races for Bob Baffert, all Grade 1 and 2. The last three were won over the polytrack at Santa Anita, including the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby. Trainer Bob Baffert has won the Kentucky Derby several times, and would not surprise any reasonable man if he won it again.

Pioneer of the Nile was sired by Empire Maker, who despite his sincerest efforts could not beat Funny Cide in the Kentucky Derby, finishing a late-closing second. He did however defeat Funny Cide in the Wood G1, and later in the Belmont G1, both over sloppy tracks in New York.

Perhaps the most important point I can make about Pioneer of the Nile, is that he is the last man standing in Southern California. I Want Revenge failed to beat him on the polytrack, and shipped off to New York where he has since dominated. Papa Clem also escaped his shadow by traveling to New Orleans to stamp his Derby ticket.

Empire Maker has proven to be a top sire, and his competitive index is currently ranked #1. This means that his offspring by the same mares that other sires have been bred to, have won more. Mr. Baffert can not be disputed as a top trainer, and jockey Garrett Gomez has won all four of his races aboard Pioneer.

There is a good chance that we haven’t seen the best of this colt yet. Pioneer’s running style is enviable. Instead of getting in pace duels or lollygagging, he manages to rate near the front if the pace is slow, and later if the pace is fast. Give Gomez some credit here as well.

Pioneer’s first run on dirt could be devastating for competitors in the same way as I Want Revenge’s Gotham. Empire Maker’s offspring have also won a higher percentage on dirt than on polytrack. This looks to be the first great progeny of Empire Maker, the one that we’ve been waiting for.

Now that I’ve gone on and on about my obvious top pick, it bears mentioning another. Win Willy found a surface he liked in the off-track at Oaklawn, dominating the Rebel G2 in his first career stakes race at Oaklawn Park with a great closing move. He returned to reality in the Louisiana, closing well to finish 4^th, three lengths behind Papa Clem.

Win Willy’s sire Monarchos is known for the wet track ability of his progeny, and if Louisville gets any of the thunderstorms that are predicted all week, his chances improve. It should be noted that Monarchos became the second horse to win the Kentucky Derby in less than two minutes, the second-fastest time ever, behind only Secretariat. Win Willy’s big question marks are the relatively unknown trainer Robertson and rider Berry.

If we are to believe the transitive property applies three year old horses, the answer becomes a bit different than what you would obtain by analyzing speed figures. Let’s throw out the rest of the batch who haven’t beaten anyone, and go with these as our chief competitors.

Here’s how I rank my Derby Dozen:

1. Pioneer of the Nile Won G1 Santa Anita, G2 San Felipe, G2 RB Lewis, G1 Cashcall Futurity
2. I Want Revenge Won G1 Wood, G3 Gotham, 3^rd in G2 Lewis, 2^nd G1 Cashcall
3. Friesan Fire Won G2 La Derby, G3 Risen Star, G3 Lecomte
4. Quality Road Won G1 Fla Derby, G2 Fountain of Youth
5. Papa Clem Won G2 Ark Derby, 2^nd G2 La Derby, 2^nd G2 RB Lewis
6. Win Willy Won G2 Rebel, 4^th G2 Ark Derby
7. Square Eddie 3^rd G2 Lexington, 2^nd G3 San Rafael, 2^nd G1 Brdrs Futurity
8. Desert Party 2^nd G2 UAE Derby, Won G3 UAE Guineas
9. General Quarters Won G1 Bluegrass, G3 SF Davis
10. Dunkirk 2^nd G1 Fla Derby
11. West Side Bernie 2^nd G1 Wood, 3^rd G3 Holy Bull
12. Musket Man Won G2 Illinois Derby, G3 Tampa Bay Derby

Notes on other contenders:

Square Eddie by Smart Strike (sire of horse of the year Curlin), trained by Doug O’neill, has yet to race on dirt. Looked great on past three polytrack races but could improve on dirt.

Desert Party by Street Cry (sire of Derby winner Street Sense) has trained in the desert, which I’m not a big fan of. However, he has a great closing move and strong pedigree. If Saeed bin Suroor ever had a legitimate Derby contender, this is it. It’s possible this horse could have moved way up the rankings by prepping in the states. Stablemate Regal Ransom beat him in the UAE, but Desert Party was closing hard as he had in the previous two races in Dubai, which he won. It looked like more of a slow pace fluke than anything else. It’s really hard to ignore this contender but I would have liked to see him prep in the US.

General Quarters needs to be a little more consistent but has turned in some solid efforts.

Musket Man won the Illinois and Tampa Bay while rating behind slow paces.

Quality Road may have ranked higher if it weren’t for the quarter crack. We just can’t ignore that injury, even if it’s said to be minor.

Another chapter in this series will be more geared toward speed and performance figures and thus will be completely different. The last two years, speed averages won, but we have more class in this field than last year.

Derby Feb.12 Prospects pdf

Many people have been asking about the “bitch-switch” that the US Air pilot activated in order to safely land his airliner in the Hudson River.

In modern airliners, there is an electronic voice activated in the cabin to warn the pilots of impending danger, for example, “Fuel tanks are low. Please refuel soon.”

The voice is not unlike those you have heard in modern cars, however in airliners the electronic voice uses a condescending female tone, and quickly became known as “the bitch” among pilot circles.

For example, seconds before a pilot activates the landing gear, the voice says, “please lower your landing gear,” whereupon the pilot would say, “shut up bitch, I know how to fly a plane.”

In emergencies however, there is a switch that they are allowed to engage that turns off the bitchy voice. It is obviously known as the bitch-switch.

When geese took out the engines on Capt Sully’s airbus, the bitch came on the speakers.

“Port engine out. Land airplane now. Starboard engine out. Land aircraft now. You are flying too low. Pull up. Please put the flaps down. You’re about to land in a river. Please pull up. You’re going to crash.”

Aggravated, Capt Sully wisely engaged the bitch-switch to turn off the bitchy voice that kept bitching at him, and land his plane with some peace and quiet.

“The truth is, we probably could have made it back to the airport, but I landed it in the water just to spite the bitch,” said Sully. “But the fact is, the bitch-switch is what saved us, because I couldn’t concentrate with all that bitching on the loudspeaker.”

How the geese took out the plane remains speculative. The remains of one of the geese found in the left engine was inspected, and the goose did not appear to be of American origin.  One scientist claimed the goose was a member of a known terrorist organization, but the body was too mutilated to verify.

Capt Sully also took issue with the fact that news organizations were reporting it as a crash. “That’s something the bitch would say. People don’t walk away from crashes without injury. This was a river landing. Notice how the plane was intact.”

“It’s like these people never heard of landing a plane in the water before,” he said with incredulity. “Why the hell do you think we have water landing instructions in the back of every seat? Please try to pay attention. If I had crashed the plane then we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

In the meantime, experts continue to track a flock of geese that was seen in the area flying south at the time of the accident. The FBI has put a moratorium on goose hunting on the east coast, stating that they need these geese alive for questioning. The herd is currently still in the air over North Carolina.

Recently, after years of not eating many muffins because I found them boring, I tried the “Butter Rum Muffin” from a giant grocery store chain (I won’t mention names), and immediately took a liking to its unique taste. This isn’t just any old muffin! Since this amazing discovery, I’ve been eating these several days a week for breakfast.

Today, as I picked up a couple of freshly baked muffins, I was wondering what it was that tasted so good about this muffin. Did it contain butter? Was there actually rum in it? It actually tasted more like butterscotch than butter rum. So I asked the baker if she could give me the ingredients.

The list starts off innocently enough, just like any other baked product: enriched bleached flour, which of course has its own subset of a dozen ingredients, including several vitamins and something appearing to be a cross between iron and sulfur. At any rate, there are about 3.7 million ingredients so let’s move on.

Partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening. What the heck is this? First of all, why do they have to hydrogenate it? And if they are bothering to go through that process at all, why not go with full hydrogenation? It sounds a little half-baked to me.

They list a subset of ingredients for this partially hydrogenated crap, let’s see: soybean oil, cottonseed oil, and, uh-oh: PROPYLENE GLYCOL MONSTERS!! They actually misspelled it “monester” but hey, nobody’s perfect. The point is: there are monsters in the muffins!

Perhaps that’s why they can’t fully hydrogenate it. What happens if they try to? I wonder. Do the monsters get angry and revolt? Do they form a larger monster? Does the entire hydrogenation process fail? Or, do they actually add the monsters as part of this process?

This raises another question entirely. If they are monsters that fit inside of shortening inside of a muffin, they must not be very large. Are these monsters invisible, or simply microscopic? And of possibly more importance, are they dead or alive?

Wait a minute: aren’t monsters normally larger than other items of comparison? For example, if you go to a monster truck rally, which I never have but want to, you will see pickup trucks that are larger than the standard pickups driving around, unless you live in rural Georgia or Alabama.

To answer that question, let’s go to the dictionary. I prefer Webster’s online, since it’s free once again. (They tried to pull some stunt a few years ago by charging a subscription fee, and apparently nobody bought into it. What a rip-off!) Well, we don’t have to look too hard. The answer lies in the first three definitions:

Monster

1 a : an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure

b : one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior or character

2 : a threatening force
3 a : an animal of strange or terrifying shape

So the monster doesn’t even have to be large. It could be any of those things listed above, which is worse than being just large! I mean, Kirstie Alley was large but she didn’t terrify anyone. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for Roseanne Barr.

These muffin monsters could be abnormal, terrifying, threatening, deviants! It’s a good thing that they’re microscopic or invisible then, so we don’t have to look at their terrifying shapes, which would be, terrifying!

Another question that frightens me to even ask: what happens to the monsters once you eat the muffin?

If they are indeed social deviants, what kind of havoc could they wreak after entering the body? If they’re a threatening force, will they attempt to take over the body? Will the host body then become terrifying in shape or abnormal?

I wonder how many monsters I’ve actually eaten this year. It might be helpful if the bakers would list a count of how many monsters are contained in each muffin. Then we could have some idea of total monster consumption.

If there were only 1 or 2 monsters per muffin, that amount would probably be tolerable, as small as they are. However, what if there are hundreds, thousands, or even millions? In that case, it seems they would be poised for a take over of the human host. There is strength in numbers.

And just what is the purpose behind these monsters? I came up with two theories: 1. They are implanted by Islamo-fascist terrorists as part of their plot to take over the US; and 2. George Bush, or more accurately, Dick Cheney, has required that bakers insert the monsters, which will be later used to secretly track human movements and listen to their phone calls.

At the bottom of the ingredients label, it says “may contain tree nuts or peanuts.” Like we’re really worried about nuts when there are monsters in the muffins! Look, it does contain butterscotch drops after all, which contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oil without the monsters.

In fact, the other ingredients are rather boring. At least it doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup, which I knew already, because I’m still alive.

I think it’s time that this grocer’s bakery, and any bakery that practices inserting monsters into their vegetable shortening, should come clean and tell us what the ramifications are. What is this hydrogenation process, how are the monsters involved, and what does this mean for our personal health?

For now, I appear to be addicted to the muffins, so I have no choice but to continue eating them unless some major health changes occur. Perhaps now that the monsters have entered my body, they installed a craving for me to eat more muffins, in order to achieve a higher monster population. Once they have enough monsters on board, they will start their mutiny.

When they do take over, what will it be like? They may turn me into some giant, propylene glycol monster in their image: terrifying, threatening, abnormal, and deviant. I may be a living a science experiment, sacrificing my body for the greater good of society. If that’s what it takes to get to the bottom of this, then so be it.

Until then my friends, let’s hope that that bakeries around the country (and Bush/Cheney) will agree to provide us with the truth behind the muffin monsters. This could be a pandemic worse than the bird flu!