More wastebook fun

But first, my boys in Yaroslavl got back to it this morning, and despite a bit of flustration had yet another successful outing.  Playing last place Titan, We opened with a score by Rafael Akhmetov on a power play just 1:17 into the game.  It was Rafael’s 2nd goal as a “Railroadman”, and was followed by Emil Galimov getting his first goal in just his second game.  Moments after Timothy Tankeev was penalized for elbowing in the second period, Stanislav Timakov pulled Klin within 2-1.  Early in the third period, goalie Pavel Shegala survived 1:49 of a Titan 2-man advantage; Shortly thereafter, Galimov- who had come down from the KHL’s Neftekhimik- got a second score to put Lokomotiv up 3-1.  Shegala was not so lucky later on; just 7 seconds after Maxim Opisov got called for a high stick, Titan Dmitry Samarin blasted one from the blue line to cut the lead back to 3-2.  But in the game’s closing minutes, Lokomotiv (who outshot Klin 11-3 in the period and 35-17 overall) put on too much pressure for the visitors to get their goalie to the bench for an extra attacker, and Galimov tallied again with 11 seconds left for the first New Loko hat trick and a 4-2 win.  The victory puts us at 4 regular time wins and 2 OT losses.  Next up is Rubin of Tyumen, a town east yet of Yekaterinburg, the team’s longest journey yet.  That’ll be on Tuesday.

Emil Galimov

• Club: Lokomotiv
• Number: 27
• Position: Forward
• Height: 187
• Weight: 76
• Birth Date.: 05/09/1992
• Nationality: Russia
• Age: 19 years 7 months
• Clubs by season: Locomotive

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Okay, now to the mayhem courtesy of Sen. Tom Coburn’s Wastebook.

#68- The NEA gave $50 K to an outfit called the Wormfarm Institute in Wisconsin to set up a 50-mile self-guided “art tour” in rural Wisconsin.  This “tour” consists of such stops as “land based art installations” and “roadside culture stations” strategically placed along farm roads.

This is an actual "roadside culture station.  Ooooh... Ahhhhh....

Wormfarm Exec Direc Donna Neuwirth explains why this is worthwhile-  “After all, the word “culture” is embedded in agriculture.”  Sheeeyeah.
Martin savings:  A good coffee table art book can be had for under $10.  If you get 25 mi/gal, this week you can take a 50-mi drive for $7.  Multiply $17 by # of people actually interested in such things in rural Wisconsin.

#67- The National Institute on Aging is spending $600 K per yr/5 yrs to study worldwide well-being.  Rand Corp. is the beneficiary of this largess, and if they are smart they’ll just run over to the Gallup poll’s website (where you can get the info for free) and copy the numbers.  That’s what I’d do.  BTW, the USA registers 59% thriving, 38% struggling, and 3% suffering.  I kinda gotta wonder about this study’s objectivity when industrialized nations such as Romania and Bulgaria topped the suffering list with at or around 40%, while perpetual hellholes Haiti and Chad are at 27 and 19%, respectively.
Martin savings:  Google something first, fathead.  100%.

#66- The National Science Foundation paid $300 K to set up with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange a night called The Matter Of Origins”.  This evening, intended to explore the origin of matter and its physics, started off with the exchange doing a video-backed dance to stimulate interest in the subject, followed by cake and discussion led by “scientists, historians, philosophers, and religious leaders”.  How’d this go?  Here’s the NY Times review:

“The cake, from a recipe by Edith Warner, the Los Alamos teahouse owner who served the physicists during the Manhattan Project, was rather uninspiring. But the artificially induced conversation (at my table, anyway) was worse, studded with questions like, “So, origins, the origins of the universe — what do you know about that?”
Perhaps I just have a bad attitude about group activities. But if you’re going to force audience participation, you have to give us something worth participating in (though the iPads the dancers held as they walked around our tables, the screens illuminated with gorgeous footage from the Hubble Telescope, were a nifty distraction). “
Martin savings:  Lessee, a subscription to the Times, where you can be part of a great conversation – rather than a “worse than uninspiring” one- runs $7.70/wk here in Indiana.  Cakes can be had for $5.  Or made cheaper.  I’d have to say that #s 66-68 were a big $2.2 million  waste.