Today, every I-A college in America started their fall practices.  Do you know what that mean!?!  It means, college football season is officially here.  True, there won’t be any games for another 4 weeks but when the players are practicing, the season is here.  So here is what you can expect from me:

1. The Cal look and feel will be back by Sept. 1st.  For those used to seeing my sports sub-blog with the Cal Bears look and feel at http://cal.thecrawfordfamily.net/blog, expect to see it back by Sept 1st.
2. I will continue to have a post-game analysis of every Cal Bears game this season.
3. I will continue to make weekly predictions for all Pac-10 games using the three metrics I used last season: winning percentage, Margin of Victory Delta (or accuracy) and Total Points Scored Delta (or accuracy).  I’ve found these to be good metrics to really really see how good someone can predict the games.  In fact, I’m going to expand it to be a game in which all Cal Bears fans who visit my site are able to participate.  Expect to see a post in the next few weeks with the link to where you would participate.  Think you can beat me?
4. As the season progresses I will give the various scenarios in a spreadsheet of who has the inside track for the top spots in the final Pac-10 standings.
5. A friend of mine and I have come up with a new computer poll that’ll be just as good at predicting the BCS teams as anything out there.  The best part is that it is EXTREMELY simple.  Expect to see a post about it before the season starts.

Another movie that Wendy and I watched recently was Just Like Heaven.  It was also surprisingly good.  While it had a fairly high “cheese factor” and a lot of stereotypical rom-com stuff, overall I was happy with it.  Also, I was very glad to see the anti-Euthenasia theme (although it was handled fairly lightly).

I have mixed feelings about Adad Sandler.  While in some ways I’m disappointed in him because his humor has gotten more sexually crass over the years, I’ve also been glad to see him attempt to have stonger messages in his movies.  Case in point: 50 first dates.  While I wasn’t happen with the androgynous character Alexa and references to tacos and sausages, I was overall very happy with the themes of true love and dedicating one’s life to another person despite the difficulty of doing so.

Well, Adam Sandler’s latest movie Click, is even more severe in following this trend.  There was even more crude humor, so much so that some of my more sensitive Catholic friends walked out on the movie.  Which is really a shame because once this movie gets rolling… it packs a powerful punch with a VERY compelling moral theme and message.  At the end of the movie (which Wendy and I went to as part of a rare “date night”) we both looked at each other and said the same thing: “That was not what I expected”

It was a powerful movie that REALLY tugged on the heartstrings.  But there was nothing cheap in those tugs.  It was a solid plot and a movie I was very glad to see.

Now only if I could get Sandler to clean up the humor a bit.

Those who know my father and I, know that we have had a few blowouts over whether there is objective moral truth or not.

Well, my new pal Steven Colbert has done a done a segment on the subject of objective truth.  And while it doesn’t specifically reference morals, I think the same principles apply to morals.  Plus, it’s a good primer on the risks of using wikipedia.

After the big showdown in Boston over Catholic Charities and gay adoption, the SF arch-diocese has decided to pre-emptively address the problem before the pressure grew to unsustainable levels.  However their solution is completely unacceptable.  As much as the article tries to put the solution in a good light, it’s nothing more than the arch-diocese “washing their hands” of their moral responsibility.  Let me give you some other “headlines” that illustrate the point:

• “Catholic Church sends pedophile priests to be public school teachers”
• “Catholic Church sells obstetric portion of hospital to Planned Parenthood”
• “Vatican to make nuclear bombs to sell to other countries”
• “Catholic Church sentences John Kerry to death, will have Texas do the execution”

If that wasn’t bad enough, not only are they “washing their hands” they’re doing so to an organization that is in business SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of helping with gay adoptions.  Just go look at their website.

To me that’s a case not only of “washing their hands” of the matter but also pro-actively subverting the Church.

May God have mercy on us all.

Well, as with all things college football these days, it’s more than just  performance that matters.  Publicity matters too.  In that vein the Cal Bears have released a website marshawn10.com to promote Marshawn Lynch as a potential Heisman candidate.  The key is to get people thinking about him early so that they’ll be watching during the season when he does his thing.

There’s great highlight video (although the production quality is a bit weak) on the site.  Go check it out.

I don’t often watch Comedy Central, but I guess Steven Colbert has a regular show there.  In a recent episode he recited the Nicene Creed as his way of issuing “full disclosure” as a reporter.

Pretty funny skit overall, but definitely worth the post because of the Creed.

For those not in the know, the Nicene Creed is a profession of faith that Catholics say weekly as part of Sunday Mass.  Other Christians do it as well.  Not only is it a part of Mass, it is an important metric used by the Catholic Church to determine if a person/group is Christian.  Basically, if you can submit to the Creed, then you are a Christian.  If not, then you’re not a Christian according to the Catholic Church.  Most Protestants do agree with the Creed.  Notable exceptions are the Mormons and the Jehovahs Witnesses.  And if you watched the Steven Colbert skit… the Unitarians don’t submit to the Creed either.

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time.  My wife and I own two cars, both sedans: A 1997 VW Jetta and a 2002 Honda Accord. The Accord is a much larger car than the Jetta and it has the fuel economy that a larger sedan would have (mid 20’s in the city, upper 20’s on the highway).  Similarly, the Jetta has the fuel economy that a smaller sedan would have (mid to upper 20’s in the city, just over 30 on the highway).  However, outside of the comfort of the Accord, the Jetta is a far more useful car.

See, I’m a big believer in making your car stretch to do as much as it can as opposed to getting a vehicle that is way beyond your needs.  The classic example of this is the big SUV.  The average SUV family I know has two kids, takes a family vacation a couple times a year, tows a light load a few times a year, goes skiing a handful of times and that’s about it.  Since they knew they wanted to have lots of space for the family vacation, wanted to be able to haul stuff and be able to go through the snow, they went out and bought a big SUV with 4-wheel drive.

Instead of going that route, I buy a sedan, put a trailer hitch on it, buy a set of chains and if necessary a rooftop luggage carrier.  When we bought property above 2000′ we were going to buy a 4-wheel drive sedan, but we sold the property before we bought the car and the 2-wheel drive Accord was eventually purchased.  Nevertheless, this strategy saves me a bunch of money at the purchase time, a ton of money each year in gas and frankly I get a better car for my day-to-day activities including being able to get in and out of most mall parking spots in one smooth action.

However, because of this strategy I really have to make the most (my wife would use the term abuse) of my cars.  All the stuff that most people do with their SUV’s, I’ve got to do with my sedans.  I make big runs to the dump, carry Christmas trees, tow boats, get bulk supplies at Home Depot (like for a new fence), pick up large items like cribs at BabiesRUs and all kinds of other things.  And the more I do this, the more I realize that my Jetta is a far more useful car than the Accord.

And the reasons are simple: interior design and rear suspension.  While there is not much advice I can give about rear suspension other than “make it stiffer” there are a TON of things I can comment on regarding interior car design that automakers routinely over look:

1. Seats fold ALL the way down: Almost all sedans have these days have fold down seat but frankly many don’t do it well.  Many of them either only fold 80% down or the surface is elevated above the trunk floor surface.  The result is that there is not a long flat surface which hurts my ability to haul long items.
2. Width of fold-down seat opening: Almost all sedans have the rear seats just in front of the rear wheels.  Therefore, when the seats are folded down, the opening through the trunk is inherently limited by the rear wheel wells.  While the ideal solution would be to limit the size of the wheel wells or widen the width of the car, this is an extraordinary change beyond the scope of the changes I’m suggesting.  The reality is that many car artificially limit the width of the opening with stupid cutout and the such.  This opening should be maximized in size!  Ideally I’d like a full 48″ so that I could put a sheet of plywood in the car, but a full 36″ is a requirement… one that the Accord doesn’t meet and the Jetta, even though it is a narrower car, does.
3. Height of the fold-down seat opening: The fold down seat has another problem: the height.  Usually there is a structural bar running across the opening at the top.  This is obviously important for safety, particularly in a side impact.  However, everything that could be done to raise the bar and keep it high (many have a curve) all the way to the edges.  A full 18″ from edge to edge is ideal.  Although the Jetta has nearly 18″ in the center it’s only about 14″ at the edges and it is one of the weaker aspects of the car.  However, because of item #2, the Accord doesn’t even get a chance to redeam itself here.
4. Width of trunk opening: A lot of sedans these days have angled the trunk door to be narrower at the bottom than at the top.  This is just about the worst thing that has happened to sedans from a flexibility standpoint.  This significantly reduces ones ability to get big square items in the trunk.  They’ll fit once inside, but they can’t get in the trunk because the corners won’t fit past the bottom of the trunk.  This is an area where the Jetta excels as it’s trunk door is completely vertical and is about the same width as the #2 so about anything that would slide in would barely fit inside.  The accord stinks in this regard.
5. Height above bumper of trunk opening: This is the last of the 5 “bookshelves” criteria.  All of the metrics so far affect how big of a set of bookshelves one could get in their sedan.  The issue here is that the bottom of the trunk opening is several inches above the floor of the trunk.  The result is that you can get the bookshelves in the trunk and past the rear seat opening, but you reach a place where you can no longer push the bookshelves in because the top of the bookshelves hits the structural bar in #3 because it is at an angle and not flat on the floor.  The higher the bottom of the trunk is, the worse this problem is.  Both the Accord and the Jetta do OK in this regard but not perfect.  Overall my “test” is if you can fit a 3′ wide set of 6′ tall bookshelves in the trunk (with seat down) of your sedan, your in good shape.  My Jetta can, the Accord can not.
6. Total Height of Trunk Opening: This is another area where the cars have gotten worse.  I call this the “TV” criteria.  TV’s tend to come in fairly cube shaped boxes (tube TV’s anyway) and so they’re tough to fit in cars.  The measurement that tends to be the deciding factor of whether they’ll fit is the distance from the bottom of the trunk opening to the front of the opening by the rear window.  The big thing that has made this worse is the increased roundness of the rear windows of cars.  If you open most trunks, you’ll notice that there is a large curvature to the trunk opening at the top by the rear window,  As such, there is actually MORE distance from the bottom of the openings than at the center.  In the Accord this curvature is a killer and I’ve had a number of items that wouldn’t fit but would have if the rear window had been closer to flat (thus removing the curvature at the trunk).  Again, I can actually fit a larger “TV box” in my Jetta than in the Accord despite the fact that it has a far larger trunk.  Incidentally, list items #4 and #5 also affect the “TV” criteria so improving in those areas will also help this test.
7. Fold Down passenger seat: This is one that the car makers seem to be catching on to.  I often want to carry long poles and the such in my car.  If I can fit them between the two front seat, I can usually get a 10′ item in either of my cars.  However, if it is wider than that opening (about 4″) then I am out of luck.  By being able to fold the passenger seat down I get a bunch of extra space for long items.  Neither of my cars can do this.

In summary, a sedan can do a lot of things… IF it is properly designed for flexibility.  It’s amazing what I can get in my Jetta.  I’ve had NUMEROUS occasions where I’ve come out of Home Depot with a big load of wood and pulled the cart up to my Jetta to be met by a group of laughing people who want to see the spectacle of me failing to get it into my car.  15 minutes later when the car is full of 40 fence boards, 4 bags of concrete (put in the back seat area for balanced weight) and all the other lumber for my fence, the crowd’s taunting turns to awe.  The same has happened with the iritated worker at BabiesRUS who has hauled the rocking chair to my car who assumes he’s going to have to haul it back inside when it doesn’t fit.  (Side note: deboxing large items can substantially help them fit into a car.)

But sadly, more and more sedans are being designed for looking cool as opposed to being functional.  The result is that they’re horribly inefficient space wise.  The result of that is that fewer and fewer people are driving sedans and trading them in for fuel-hogs that they don’t need 99% of the time.

Man, the Oakland A’s sure know how to mix pathetically mediocre with incredibly impressive.  They went into the All-Star break losing a bunch of games to mediocre teams.  Then they came out of the break by taking three of four from Boston at Fenway.  The A’s are the first team to do that all season and only the 3rd team (Yankess and Toronto being the others) to win a series at Fenway.

Go A’s!  Keep it up at Baltamore!

I’ve got a BIG list of personal accomplishments that I want to do before… well… I die.  I’m sure a lot of them I’ll never do, but I want to keep these goals in front of me so that when all is said and done I can look back and be proud of what I accomplished.  Many of those accomplishments are sailing related.

Yesterday I managed to check one of those off the list: Go 20 knots (that’s about 23 mph for you landlubbers) in my Laser sailboat.  To give the landlubbers out there some perspective on what it is like to go 20 knots in a small sailboat (13 feet long), the spray from the boat was so intense it was nearly impossible to see where I was going.  I was sailing by “feel” because visually it was a complete white-out half the time.  Normally Lasers go about 5 mph… sometimes 10 when the wind is moderate.  One has to be sailing in 25-30 knot winds with the right wave conditions on a tight broad-reach to hit these kinds of speeds.  It’s like finding that perfect hill to bike down that you could go 40 mph cruising, but instead choose to pedal as fast as you can and hit 65 mph.  The whole time I was thinking to myself: man this is fun… but I’d better not wipe out because it’ll be PAINFUL.

So, for those skeptical types out there, I made sure to take a picture of my GPS “trip computer” screen (click image to get enlarged image):

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So stick that in your pipe and smoke it!  Me, flying through the water at 20.1 knots.  One item checked off the list.  Just in case you’re interested, here are some of the other sailing accomplishments I’m goaling for:

1. Race from SF to Hawaii singlehanded
2. Sail from SF to Sacramento in a single day on a dinghy
3. Bike to SF from Sacramento in a single day
4. Do #’s 2 and 3 on the same day
5. Qualify for and sail in the Laser world championships
6. Finish in the top 20 of the North American Grand Prix regatta series
7. Round Cape Horn