Links for 2012-09-24

In which we look at the real goal for the Giants, how they’ve overspent on running backs over the last twenty years, the capital-S surrealism of Daniel Pinkwater (author of Lizard Music and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death), and an attempt to put the cost of the Large Hadron Collider in perspective.

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• One LHC A Year

  Italy, who is one of the contributors to CERN, and thus helped financing the construction of the Large Hadron Collider in measure proportional to their gross internal product, is a country full of people who visit magicians, tarot readers, healers, etcetera. This is a huge phenomenon, and an economy which fully (estimated 99%) escapes taxation. In Italy every year an estimated 6B euros (about 7.5 billion dollars) is spent in these activities, according to a Eurispes 2010 investigation (sorry, the linked report is in Italian – I am sure it exists in English as well though). 6B euros is about the cost of the full LHC, or just a bit less. This means that Italy, alone, could have fully financed the LHC effortlessly if magicians and other charlatans had been stripped of that moneys, illegally earned. Or that, if those clowns had paid their taxes, Italy could have fully financed the LHC in two and a half years. (I remind you that constructing the LHC took several years).

• rushthatspeaks | Horace Gerstenblut n’existe pas, or, why Daniel Pinkwater is the greatest living Surrealist

  It was not until quite recently, however, that I noticed that Pinkwater is actually a capital-S Surrealist, by which I mean that he is intentionally and with forethought following the artistic and literary principles established by André Breton and his circle in Paris in the 1920s as part of the Surrealist movement, and that he is alluding in his body of work to the Surrealists and their intellectual ideas.

• Giants Running in Circles With Their Backfield Spending – The Triangle Blog – Grantland

  Montgomery’s failure led the Giants to take another running back in the first round of the 2000 draft, their sixth first- or second-round pick at running back in 10 years. That back was Ron Dayne, and despite his collegiate success as Wisconsin, he hit the hole in the same sense that you hit the hay; it seemed warm and inviting to Dayne, and once he got there, he wanted to spend eight hours in it without moving. He averaged just 3.5 yards per carry and failed to run for more than 770 yards in a season with the Giants.

• Panthers vs. Giants | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

  The Giants shouldn’t take their eyes off the ultimate goal: looking like garbage for half the season, then embarrassing the Patriots.