ESPN picks the World Series winner

It's always amusing to track experts' predictions for the baseball playoffs, which have been so utterly unpredictable of late that a prognosticator stands barely more than a statistical chance of actually being correct. In other words, their guess is as good as anyone's. ESPN asked 15 of their experts to take a crack at it though, and here are the teams involved, their season records, how many think they'll make it to the World Series, and finally the number of picks they received to win it all:

St. Louis       100 62 (7,2)
Chi White Sox    99 63 (1,0)
NY Yankees       95 67 (3,1)
Boston           95 67 (2,1)
LA Angels        95 67 (9,6)
Atlanta          90 72 (0,0)
Houston          89 73 (8,5)
San Diego        82 80 (0,0)

Oregon: What is it good for?

Many have asked the question, but now we have an answer, thanks to a comprehensive list in The Oregonian last Sunday. The accompanying article put it best in these excerpts:

You could argue that everything in Oregon is world-class. You also could argue that nothing here is world-class. But what fun would that be? That's where we come in. Two dozen of us set out to add a little truth-squading and to spur debates with what we think makes the grade. And the results are not necessarily what you'd expect. (Goodbye Multnomah Falls and Tillamook cheese.)

Local boosters call this state Paradise Found. A utopia of outdoor wonders. A misty isle where the natives celebrate food and drink and creativity. A retreat from the freeways and fast lanes. Of course, they would be right. To naysayers, Oregon is a mediocre place, underpopulated and overprincipled. A place that settles too easily for the OK, where few things stack up to their counterparts in bigger cities. They have a case, too.