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The Pushkar Camel fair is a five day event that focuses on all things livestock and camel-oriented.  It takes place in the town of Pushkar in Rajasthan each year in November and has become such a tourist draw that more than 300,000 people now come from the surrounding regions and all over the world to get a look at this celebration of Indian tradition.

It originally started as a way to motivate traders to come to the town and do business.  Every year it gained more and more popularity and became less focused on just trading, eventually evolving into a full-fledged festival while still retaining the original intent.

During this time, more than 50,000 camels are brought to Pushkar, one of the largest gatherings of camels in the world.  They come decorated, dressed up, shaved and in whatever other creative manners their owners can think of.  The camels are there to be traded, of course, as are a collection of cows, sheep, goats and horses, but there is much more to the Pushkar Fair than that.

The whole thing begins with a camel race and shifts to a more festival atmosphere of music and dancing.  There are interesting events, such as the longest mustache contest, and 

sporting events, such as a cricket match organized between Pushkar’s local team and a randomly selected group of eager tourists.  In addition there are magicians, acrobats, snake charmers, exhibitions of Indian culture and market filled with local crafts.  As the festival days progress, the celebratory nature shifts to that of a more religious bent and people take the opportunity to bath in the lake of Pushkar, which is known for its ability to cleanse away sins.

If you have some spare cash, you can even take a viewing tour of the fairgrounds from a hot air balloon.  It’s best to reserve a hotel early if you’re coming, however, and expect to pay a bit more because of the festival.  For those interested in the culture of India, the Pushkar Fair is a great way to see many regional people performing their traditions in one place.  

The situation between drug cartels and government forces is a violent and often chaotic one in the country of Mexico.  Tens-of-thousands of people have been killed so far and many more will likely die before the problem has achieved resolution. 

Some groups of people, left by the government to fend for themselves, have decided to take matters into their own hands.  When they can not get the government to send in soldiers to protect them, they simply pick up their own weapons and fight the drug cartels themselves.

Some places, in response to ongoing cartel activity in their regions, are putting up barricades, arming themselves and setting up patrols to keep the enemy from getting into their villages.  People who travel into these towns are being stopped and searched, to make sure they aren’t there to do harm.  Local police forces are being told to go away, the villagers knowing that Mexico’s cops are notorious for having a very high level of corruption.

Despite their best efforts, it’s unlikely that villages will be able to hold off the cartels if those organizations decided to take a serious interest in suppressing them.  It might not be the best thing for cartels to do, considering all their other problems, but it’s still a possibility.  So why would villagers turn vigilante and risk their own lives?

There are many reasons, not the least of which are the crimes the cartels have committed against these people in the past.  They have been terrorized, their friends and family have gone missing, and multiple cartels have turned their homes into a war zone.  Representatives of these vigilante villagers have said that they will only stand down when the Mexican government sends soldiers there to set up a base of operations and protect them.

Meanwhile, the rest of village life goes on as usual.  People farm and shop and live out their lives, all the while existing within a potential war zone.  Until the government figures something out, they will have to fend for themselves.  From the look of things, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it thus far.  Maybe the best way to win the war against the cartels is to give weapons to all the people who have a vested interest in fighting them?

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We're like you.  A little bit different.  -- ad seen on a bus ... for an insurance company, of all things

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The Seattle blog-o-sphere has definitely always been a little bit different.  One of the ways in which it is different is the way in which we all one-up ourselves in the hustle and bustle to take 1st place in line at the Most Objective counter.

Monday, Dr. D will smile wryly as a writer informs The Faithful that Hultzen, Franklin and Wilhelmsen aren't worth nearly as much as we homers assume that they are.  Tuesday, he'll smile sardonically as we're warned to stop noodling about deals for Wil Myers and Billy Hamilton; teams don't trade the diamonds of their farm systems.  They play the cheap guys and trade the arb guys.  C'mon, don'choo know anything?

.............

We can yell, scream and threaten about how much different James Paxton's value will be after he makes 8 good starts in the majors.  In my view that's just about impossible to nail down.  What I do know is that Bill James said that a glamor ML-ready starting pitcher in the minors is priceless before he debuts in the majors, and we'll proceed here on the assumption that you don't lose a lot of value on Paxton by trading him two months early.  (Winter, vs. in June.)  If the reality is different - if Paxton's value doubles with his first 8-10 starts in the bigs - then of course you just don't trade him.

..............

Billy Beane has made some unreal trades over the years.  He flipped Mark Mulder and got --- > Dan Haren, Daric Barton and Kiko Calero.  Slap me silly!, that's enough to make a rival GM swear off dealing with Moneyball.

You want to count up Billy heists on your fingers, you're gonna have to take off your socks too.  He traded for Milton Bradley right before MB went nuts.  With the bat, not with the antics.  Billy traded an aging Terrence Long for Mark Kotsay, and then Kotsay immediately turned in a season that raked in MVP votes.  He got Kevin Appier for Jeff D'Amico and two guys you never heard of, and Appier won him 15 games.  He traded Ben Grieve and parts for Johnny Damon, Cory Lidle - who was excellent for him - and Mark Ellis.  There was Jose Ortiz for Jermaine Dye.  And when it came Nick Swisher's time to go, Beane got back Gio Gonzalez and spects for him.

But the best trade Billy Beane ever made - the one that dropped baseball's jaw so wide that it walked home scooping gravel - was the Dan Haren trade:

December 14, 2007: Traded by the Oakland Athletics with Connor Robertson to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Brett Anderson, Chris Carter, Aaron Cunningham, Dana Eveland,Carlos Gonzalez and Greg Smith.

We bring this up because Brett Anderson and Carlos Gonzalez -- the two top-100 prospects in the deal -- pair off so symmetrically with James Paxton and Nick Franklin.

Brett Anderson - ranked #38 by Baseball America at the time.  Had just completed class A+ ball with a hot fastball, good but not great statistics.  Was considered possibly only 1-2 years away from the majors.

James Paxton - variously ranked #15 to #45 by different services.  Has graduated AA and is considered 1 game away from the majors.

Carlos Gonzalez - ranked #18 to #32 over the years pre-2006 to pre-2007; had been a hotshot for a while.  At the time of the deal, had just hit .285/.335/.480 in AA ball at age 21 as a "tweener" outfielder.

Nick Franklin - variously ranked #20 to #55 pre-2012; is currently ranked #16 hitter by John Sickels.  Has just hit .320/.400/.500 in AA at age 21 as a shortstop.

A quick note on Nick Franklin.  He could be Hansley Ramirez; it's a very realistic possibility.  The swing is unreal.  The results are there to match.  Sabertistas don't care about Ken Griffey Jr. swings.  Scouts?  MLB(TM) shot-callers?  They do sit there in the stands and stare at the mechanics. They do care about Ken Griffey Jr. swings.  /note.

Supposing that Paxton and Franklin perform anywhere near military specs, couldn't we use them?  ... Naaaaah.  Perfect ... for anyone else.  :- )

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Anderson was in the low minors at the time of the Dan Haren trade; CarGo had a bat very similar to Franklin's but coming from an outfield, not an infield, position.  James Paxton, and Nick Franklin, as they stand right now, are superior assets to what Anderson and CarGo were at the time of the Haren trade.

The reason that Beane was able to score such a rich haul on Dan Haren was that he'd made Haren available early.  Haren still had three cheap, club-friendly years remaining; he scored 6 WAR per year for the DBacks at $4, $7, and $8 million.

If you were going to package James Paxton, Nick Franklin, and filler for somebody, it had better be exactly the player the Mariners want.  We're not talking Alex Gordon or Billy Butler here.

Zduriencik talks about "getting this thing where we want it."  The talent pyramid, BELOW the 25-man level, is THERE.  He is sitting on premium, premium trade assets.   And a lot of them.

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As a horror writer, I can't help but notice the glut of zombie novels and books that are out these days. You can't seem to read anything horror without bumping into a few zombies around the way. I get it, zombies are hot right now, but too often writers don't understand how to write about zombies.

Thanks to George Romero and others, zombies have a folklore about them now. Sure, you can pretty much make up the rules as its your book, but the audience is going to expect a few things and if you don't portray them correctly, then it's going to turn them off. “Write of the Living Dead” is a writer's handbook on how to write about the living dead.

It's pretty tongue in cheek, but the information they provide is actually very good and relevant to the genre. That's right, genre. Zombies can no longer be shelved under the general horror category and have become an entity in and of themselves. I've read many how-to write books in my day from the stylistic like Stephen Kinds to the dry and deadpan of many scholarly texts.

This book is not only informative, but entertaining. The writers realized that unless you're a diehard writer, no one is going to sit through a 300 page treatise on ins and outs of writing about zombies. Instead, they chose to, pardon the pun, liven it up a bit. The writers poke fun at the genre and themselves throughout the book and it was a true pleasure to read.

If you are a writer who wants to join the undead bandwagon, then grab this book and treat it as your bible.