ULNAR COLLATERAL LIGAMENT RECONSTRUCTION: The National Baseball Hall of Fame today announced the twelve men up for induction in next month's Veterans Committee ballot:

Former players Vida Blue, Dave Concepcion, Steve Garvey, Ron Guidry, Tommy John, Al Oliver, Ted Simmons and Rusty Staub; former manager Billy Martin; and executives Pat Gillick**, Marvin Miller and George Steinbrenner.

My votes would go to Miller for sure; Simmons probably and John possibly (I need to crunch the numbers); and Steinbrenner ... reluctantly, but yes.

** As to Gillick, Isaac suggests that I note: "He has fetishistic preferences for age over youth and for newspaper stats over advanced metrics, and Philadelphia is the first team that he has not left in a complete shambles at the end of his tenure (having traded away or shelved all of the youthful talent in the process of acquiring aging veterans)... In 2003, when the Mariners were one obvious flaw away from a second 100-win/AL West title season, he spent the trading deadline 3000 miles and a continent away from the office, paying no attention, because that was the day he picked to move his family into their new house. The Mariners won 93 games and finished a game and a half back of Oakland after not making a significant move all year, including (of course) at the deadline. They badly needed a 3B (Cirillo's OPS+ was 74) and could have used an upgrade at SS (Carlos Guillen, pre-Detroit, had an OPS+ of 107 but was playing terrible defense), plus they could have used a PH because their bench stunk."

added:  Fired Joe Morgan!  ESPN Sunday Night Baseball is replacing its broadcast crew with Dan Shulman, Orel Hershiser and, if he's not managing somewhere, Bobby Valentine.

[IT'S] ACTUALLY PSYCHOTIC. [IT'S] INSANELY JEALOUS. [IT'S] IRRATIONAL, AND I'M SCARED OF [IT]: A viewing of The Social Network this weekend did nothing to change my mind about any of the reasons, both good and bad, that I have for never having used Facebook as a social medium. That's not to say that I haven't signed up for Facebook, though, because I have. I did it because I have to use it for some job-related research. So I gave Facebook my name, sex, and birth date, and nothing else (except that I've fed it the names of some people I've tried to locate, again, for work and not personal reasons).

Because I'm not a Facebook power-user, I haven't followed the news about its privacy issues too closely, but from what I recall, it has focused on Facebook's harvesting of the data you exchange over the site -- your list of friends, the links you exchange, and the personal data you enter yourself -- for profit. That's bad, but in a what-did-you-expect kind of way. It's no different from what the banks do.

I can't shake the feeling that Facebook is engaged in a more ominous kind of data gathering, though. As I said, I've given Facebook nothing more than my name (I'm aware of a half-dozen or so other people in the US with the same name) and birth date. The searches I've run are work-related, and do not include my own friends. Yet Facebook has proven remarkably adept in identifying and suggesting that I friend people I knew in high school (and before), in law school, and from this very blog. It couldn't have guessed these names from the information I've exchanged over Facebook itself, since I haven't exchanged anything potentially relevant. It couldn't have guessed these names from "blogs and news media" from which Facebook admits to supplementing user profiles, because I blog under a pseudonym and am, sadly, unfamous.

But the names it has identified bear a striking resemblance to the names of people in my (supposedly private, secure) Outlook email account. Facebook knows very few of my college friends, with whom I have mostly lost touch. Yet it frequently identifies as a potential friend the crazy person who emails every lawyer in San Francisco to see who can take his paranoid anti-FBI litigation. It hasn't tried to put me in touch with any of the people for whom I've searched using Facebook, but it often tries to get me to friend a woman with the same name as a client contact of mine.

I don't want to say that I don't have a problem with a site that harvests information I exchange over it. I have a much greater problem, though, with a site that reads my email without my permission -- particularly if it's a site that admits in the past to harvesting and selling data. I'm a lawyer who works with a lot of documents subject to varying legal confidentiality requirements, some out of the ordinary even for lawyers accustomed to the attorney-client privilege. I have never consented to Facebook viewing my emails (even to/from) information, and I never would.

Is anybody else out there really skeeved out by this? Or have I completely missed the boat on Facebook's friend-suggestion algorithm?

SPINNING TO INFINITY: We haven't had a The Amazing Race thread in a couple of weeks, I don't think. We're becoming big fans of Nat & Kat, simply because they get it done without a lot of whining about the unfairness of certain tasks. Twenty-two year vegetarian confronts a lamb's head and chows down. Woman deathly afraid of heights climbs on a gondola and forces herself through it. I imagine there is a fair amount of this sort of everyday courage in medicine, so I'm not surprised. But it's a nice change, and they are doing quite well.

That's not why I'm posting though: Kevin and his Dad were faced with a 10,000 Rouble cab fare. Approximately ~US$330. I'd always wondered about the wait-around time on these cabs and how it was handled and, given that prices in Russia (for foreigners at least) are confiscatory, $300+ for a half-day's cab doesn't seem out of line. But it's never seemed to be an issue before and no one else had that sort of trouble (of course, no one hired a cab for as long as Kevin). Anyone note any TAR-lore about how all this? I'd be surprised if teams ever had that much pocket money.

Second: why can't TAR get some better stage-winning prizes than Travelocity, 7-UP, and some random slugs of cash?

I'M HERE AND YOU'RE HERE AND IT'S TRUE, THERE'S A WHOLE LOT OF WALKING TO DO: What I learned about zombies from last night's Walking Dead (still zombies, so I'm still enjoying it): zombies can climb fences, but they can't climb ladders.* They can use rocks as tools, but they can't drive cars.

*Plants vs. Zombies begs to differ.

ZUCKERMAN UNPUBLISHED: U.S. News and World Report, the once-weekly magazine best known for its various Rankings issues, is ditching all the magazine stuff to just do occasional Rankings publications.  According to AdAge, its circulation was 1.1 million this year, which raises a question -- who was still reading it anyway?

A 21 WAVE MOTION GUN SALUTE: Yoshinobu Nishizaka, co-creator of anime classic Space Battleship Yamato (released stateside as Star Blazers), died today at the age of 75 in a drowning accident off his own Yamato steamship in the Bonin Islands, and I swear I have a decent alibi.  As always, I will use anything Star Blazers-related as an excuse to link to the latest version of the trailer for the upcoming live-action film, now with English subtitles and a theme song by, gulp, American Idol judge Steven Tyler.  No, it doesn't beat the original.

I'VE BEEN WATCHING YOU LIKE A DINGO WATCHES A HUMAN BABY: The list of "super awesome American animated films not made by Pixar" is not that long -- Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, maybe Kung Fu Panda ... and now, I'm pretty sure, Megamind. Not just for the gorgeous 3D, not just for being infinitely better than Despicable Me in the "humanize the villain" genre of 2010, not just for the extra work it's given to whoever's writing a dissertation on "Tina Fey and Body Image Issues" based on how her character was drawn and not just for the random Donkey Kong and Marlon Brando in Superman references and the Shepard Fairey-esque No You Can't posters, but for crackling dialogue like this voiced by Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt:

Megamind: In case you've noticed, you've fallen right into my trap!
Metro Man: You can't trap justice! It's an idea, a BELIEF!
Megamind: Even the most heartfelt belief can get corroded with crime!
Metro Man: Justice is a non-corrosive metal!
Megamind: But metals can be melted, by the heat of revanche!
Metro Man: It's REVENGE, and it's best served cold!
Megamind: But it can be easily reheated, in the microwave of evil!
Metro Man: Well, I think your warranty's about to expire!
Megamind: Maybe I got an extended warranty!
Metro Man: Warranties are invalid, if used beyond their intended purpose!

Bring the kids. Borrow some if you have to.