Mark Byron

LIbrary Musings

I need to get back to blogging more often. I had the whole week off this week, but haven't blogged since last Sunday.

For the second straight week, we watched the end of a football game at a restaurant. Last week, it was a Fresno-State Wisconsin game in metro Milwaukee with a bunch of excitable cheeseheads at a Champps sports grill; that was the first time I saw the end of a game at a "sports bar" loosely defined. Today, it was UK-Louisville in a near-deserted Ruby Tuesday's in Lexington.

There was a method to our madness; our cable system didn't have the game. The local Insight cable system in Lexington took the ESPN-U feed and had it on their normal side of the cable, but the SatStar system that is the captive cable outfit for our apartment complex didn't do that. Thus, we had a very leasurly lunch and caught the whole second half at RT.

After getting past some turnoveritis in the third quarter, UK hung on to win 31-27, surviving a UL hail-mary at the buzzer.

More blogigng later; Eileen has her books and we're heading back home to catch Notre Dame-Michigan State and a Michael Card concert this evening.

Friday Bullets

• Sotomayor got through the Senate as expected, 68-31 with Ted Kennedy a no-show. Nine Republicans crossed the aisle on the vote, with Kit Bond the biggest head-scratcher. Most of the others were RINOey (Lugar, Snowe, Collins, Voinivich, Lamar!) Hispanic (Martinez) or non-confrontational (Gregg and Graham; Gregg thought about a Commerce Secretary spot before realizing that being on the Obama team was more than he could swallow and Graham is a moderate on judicial picks).
• With the August recess among us, the Republic is once again safe for the moment. Members of Congress will get an earful about the health care package, much of which Democrats may not want to hear. Stories of members of the lower chamber ducking their constituents have become common. We're repeating 1993 and Hillarycare, and as the old saw goes, when history repeats itself, it does so as a farce the second time.
• Speaking of history repeating itself, we have Ben Wallace signing up for a second stint with the Pistons. In three years, Big Ben goes from getting a near-max contract with Chicago to league min. He might be past his freshness date, but he still can do his thing under the boards.
• Here's a new way to get turf toe. That'll teach you to desecrate the Big House like that.
• I hit two-score and eight on Wednesday, and was touched by my FIN 354 students bringing a birthday cake to our Wed. night class. I pulled the old Sally Field line "You like me, you really like me."

Weeps and Wales

Some odd bells from my past are going off today. This story takes me back to our Florida days, where a youth from Lake Wales, Maikon Bonani, who is USF's placekicker, fell from a ride at Busch Gardens in Tampa (walking distance from USF, IIRC) where he was working; he moved to secure a gondola door and wound up going for a ride along-side, sounding like a bad scene from a movie. He dropped 35 feet into a grassy area, and is OK save a injured vertebrae.

Lake Wales was where my old teaching digs, Warner Southern College, was located. I found out a few days ago that it has now morphed into Warner University; the change happened last October. I guess I'll have to update my resume; not that I plan on using it any time soon. I taught at Great Lakes College in Saginaw which got rolled into Davenport University, so I now have two footnoted teaching gigs.

Monday Musings

Let's see if I can get back to blogging on a regular basis. I don't have a huge readership, but what I do have appreciates what I do share.

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They're done with the slow-motion elections in India, and the coalition headed by the Congress Party (that's the party of Nehru and the Ghandis) got a majority of the vote. I think that's good news, given that Congress seems to have drifted to the free-market side of things over the years after years of being more socialist-oriented.

Even though the BJP tends to be a bit more free-market oriented than Congress, it also has the baggage of Hindu nationalism that will manifest itself in its supporters gooning it up and killing Christians, Sikhs, and Muslims. Given a choice between Tony Blair and a paleocon with a goonish streak, I'll take NuLab, thank you.

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I haven't been paying too much attention to the NBA playoffs this year; it might be a bit of fatigue after the Pistons were a non-factor for the first time in many years. We have something of a changing of the guard, with a Cleveland-Orlando series in the east and a Lakers-Denver series. In the east, Boston couldn't quite get it done without Garnett and Chauncey gets to go to a seventh straight conference final, this time with a new horse.

We're a series away from Madison Avenue's dream series, Kobe vs Lebron.

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Speaking of new horses, we have the oddity of a jockey having a shot at a Triple Crown without a horse having one. Calvin Borel jumped ship from Mine that Bird to ride superfilly Rachel Alexandra to a Preakness win. If RA is healthy, he'll have a very good shot of winning a Triple Crown on different horses for the first time in history.

The Prodigal Returns

I'm baaack. I haven't been away from blogging for this long in the seven-plus years I've been at this, but a combination of allergies and depressing news that I'd rather not think about have kept me from the keyboard. Also, a rather engaging Monday night investments class has given me an outlet to talk shop of economic issues along with whatever I'm supposed to be lecturing on that night.

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When age-peers die, it spooks me a little, so this story of Wayman Tisdale passing was sad. Sports fans remember his as a power forward at Oklahoma and three NBA clubs, but for folks who hang out on the smooth jazz channel, he was an is rather than a was, having a solid second career as a jazz bassist. Unlike a lot of basketball players who will dabble with music as a hobby, Tisdale became a legit jazz star.

His album titles often borrowed from his basketball career; his debut album, Power Forward both described his basketball position and his crisp, energetic bass style. What proved to be his final release (barring any posthumous records of stuff that was "in the can"), Rebound, marked one of his major stat columns in basketball and his now-failed attempt to recover from cancer.

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Lexington is horse country, so we get wall-to-wall coverage of the Triple Crown events. One of the more interesting Preakneses in a while will go down this afternoon, where Calvin Borel has an interesting spot of being in line to win a personal Triple Crown. He rode Mine That Bird to a upset win in the Kentucky Derby and rode superfilly Rachel Alexandra to victory in the Kentucky Oaks the day before.

Bo-rail has opted to go with Rachel Alexandra, who has dominated the fillies and needs competition. It's scary in that it reminds me of an equally dominant Ruffian, where her primary jockey, Jacinto Vasquez, was riding both her and top colt of the year Foolish Pleasure; when the two met in that fateful match race at Belmont where Ruffian broke down, Vasquez opted to ride Ruffian.

RA is the early favorite, with Mine That Bird relegated to a 6-1 co-third choice.

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More blogging later. I have to go help with a clothing give-away at church.

Tuesday Catch-Ups

Yes, I'm still alive and kicking, albeit with a snootful of allergies due to a warm Kentucky spring. I've also been absorbed with a semi-new (I got it with Christmas gift cards but didn't crack it open until a few weeks ago) Tiger Woods '08 golf game, which has a career mode where you work your way from fleecing your bosses for $200 Nassaus to the amateur circuit to second-tier tour to PGA.

Anyways, lots of interesting things in the news.

Swine Flu-Mexico is all but going to ground, closing schools, tourist sites and restricting restaurants to take-out only to keep stuff from spreading. We have a number of cases in the US, but no deaths as of yet. The deaths seem to be from young adults, not the very young or the elderly, which reminds folks of some other nasty viruses.

What happens after pigs fly? Swine flew.

From RINO to DINO-Arlen Specter crossed the aisle, giving the Democrats 59 votes if you count two left-of-center independents. If and when Al Franken finally snags the MN Senate seat, that will bring that coalation to a cloture-inducing 60 votes.

However, that only changes things on party-line votes; Specter had been voting with the Democrats on a number of key issues, and merely becomes a moderate Democrat like, say, Ben Nelson. He's still in play on non-party-line issues, so there hasn't been a major shift in power.

What this does is buy Specter another term if he can win a Democratic primary in 2010. A GOP primary rematch with Pat Toomey may well have gone to Toomey, given that it was a very close call in 2004 and conservatives are even more ticked at Specter than they were in 2004. If the Democrats can count to 10 and not pull a Lieberman on Specter, Specter should win in a walk-over in a general election over Toomey, 60-40, or maybe 55-40 with a 5% hard-left protest vote.

Draft-Matthew Stafford wound up going #1 to the Lions. He seems to be a solid pick, maybe not worth the first pick overall, but since Detroit needs a QB and he's the best guy on the board, you pick him #1. They also got a big TE, Brandon Pettigrew, for him to throw to.

Some interesting meanderings

• Mark Sanchez gets to become the next Joe Namath with the Jets.
• Beanie Wells goes to Arizona, where he'll take over for Edderin James
• Here's a second rounder that got me excited; WV QB Pat White, being marketed as a WR, goes to Miami. One word-WILDCAT! The Fins have been running a variant of the WV spread offense with Ronnie Brown playing single-wing tailback. White would be perfect in that role. If the Dolphins are smart, they might do something akin to 2006 Florida, where they let White play Tebow to Pennington's Chris Leak.

Library Musings

Eileen had a long batch of unemployment this winter, but she got back to work last week, which means we had the radio on the alarm clock go off at 5:45 for the first time in a while. While K-LOVE may be a bit commercialized and a touch materialistic, it's still the best thing on a limited alarm clock reciever; I'm debating about springing for an Internet alarm clock where you can get simulcasted stations and free-stadning Internet channels, but for now, we're stuck with K-LOVE.

Anyways, we're used to the Rivers doing that "morning drive" show and they were conspicious by their absence. Turns out they stepped away-

Two of Christian radio's biggest personalities have decided to end their popular morning show.

The California-based radio group K-LOVE announced, Monday, that it will no longer air its program featuring Jon and Sherry Rivers.

The Rivers have hosted the morning show for seven years.

Actually, the gal that is now doing that gig seems to be doing a better job, with a big more earnestness and a bit less sarcasm than the Rivers. However, it was an interesting change.

 

Shreaded Tweets

I'm trying to get back to a more normal blogging routine, but a combination of an all-night-class schedule and more time with Eileen while she's between jobs means less free time for writing. However, she did provide this winner.

As I was getting set to go this afternoon, I came up to grab the empty carrying case for my laptop; I had used it the day before to take exams onto campus, leaving the computer proper behind.

Me" It's got nothing in it now, but will shortly."
Eileen "Can I meet him?
Me "Who?"
Eileen "Will Shortly."

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Twelve year olds of all ages will appreciate this one about a legal dispute over iPhone apps, or if "Your Jedi master ever said 'My finger you will pull.... hmmmmmm?'”

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The One was signing in the stim-ulus package today. Here's something that seems a bit off

US President Barack Obama has signed his hard-fought economic stimulus plan in Denver, after Congress approved the $787bn (£548bn) package last week.

Speaking at a signing ceremony he said it was "the most sweeping recovery package in our history". The plan is aimed at saving or creating 3.5 million jobs and boosting consumer spending and rebuilding infrastructure.

If my math's correct, that's just under $225K per job. Create one of those for me, please. We could just write 3.5 million checks for $50,000 and bring the package in at $175 billion.

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Interesting trade in the works that would send Tracy McGrady to the Nets for Vince Carter.

McGrady is slated to make $22 million during the 2009-10 season. However, McGrady's contract comes off the books in the summer of 2010. The deal would save the Nets roughly $21 million over the life of Carter's contract. The Nets would then have around $30 million in cap room to use in a stellar free-agent market.

Sources say the Nets are also concerned about McGrady's health. McGrady has already missed 18 games this year. The Houston Chronicle reported on Tuesday that McGrady missed Monday's practice and will not play against the Nets as he prepares to seek more opinions on his problematic left knee.

McGrady is an old 29. He was a straight-outa-HS guy who's in his 12th year in the league; he came out of my old stomping grounds in Lakeland. It seems like he has a  lot of miles on the odometer.

However, the conventional wisdom is that the powers that be would love to have LeBron James in the New York area and his Cavs contract is up in 2010. LeBron's also supposed to be tight with rapper and Nets co-owner Jay-Z.

We're at a point where cap space is more important than people; witness the salary dump in the Big Easy, shipping Tyson Chandler to Siberia OKC.

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Speaking of an old 29, the NFL seems to be doing a remix of Logan's Run this off season; if running backs hit 30, they're renewed released. Deuce McAllister just got dumped by the Saints and LaDainian Tomlinson may get the same treatment from the Chargers.

I remember one ESPN radio talker mention that hitting 30 is the kiss of death for NFL running backs, for the star backs seem to quickly head down hill when they pass that three-decade mark. It seems like the GMs agree with the guy.

Shreaded Tweats

Yesterday, post stim-ulus vote, I asked "who gets to play Pat Toomey in 2010 and give Specter a challange in the primary?" It won't be Toomey himself; he's gotten too comfy with his Cudgel for Growth gig to do it, but a posse is gathering to help fund a challanger. They've got the RINO Sisters in their sights, too, but Toomey just missed beating Specter in 2004, so it can be done.

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It looks like we're getting a good, nasty thunderstorm front going in mid Feburary. The south-central NOAA radar has a nice line of red running from San Antonio to Kansas City and it's heading our way. They're forecasting that "Winds could gust as high as 55 mph" tomorrow here in Lexington. Hopefully, all the trees that were weakened by the ice storm of two weeks ago will stand up to things when "fiesta time" arrives; that's what my mother-in-law calls it when the radar start to show the Hispanicesque orange and red colors indicating nasty storm activity.

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We need to do a better job of teaching civics, although the teachers of the 50s are the culprits here-

Police arrested a man near the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday after he drove up to one of the building's barricades with a rifle in his vehicle and told officers that he had a delivery for President Obama, a Senate spokesman said.

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider identified the man as Alfred Brock, 64, of Winnfield, Louisiana. She said Brock was charged with possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition.

The president hangs out at the White House, dude. Wrong big building.

Monday Moanin'

It looks like A-Rod has fessed up to performance-enhancing drugs in the early 00s, 2001-03 to be exact. That will go a ways to get it behind him, although he's working behind a slightly convenient dodge that "I don't know exactly what substance I was guilty of using." That might well be true; in some circles, you'll often see folks taking stuff without checking the details, especially in days of yore before you could get in trouble for a bad drug test.

Give him credit for coming forward rather than pull a Roger Clemens of suing the accuser; that assumes that the Rocket was using, which seems likely. Usually, you don't have this much evidence against someone in a frame-up.
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Israel will get interesting later this week after tomorrow's elections. The mainstream conservative Likud party is slated to get the most seats and überhawkish Yisrael Beitenu might nudge out Labor for third slot behind the current ruling Kadima party and Likud. Given the problems in Gaza, it's a good time to be a hawk.

The question will be, as often is the case in Israel politics, what the coalition will look like. Even the strongest parties are only slated to get a quarter of the vote, so a package of three or four parties will be needed to get to a majority. Things seem to have shifted enough to the right to make Kadima-Labor centered coalition viable.

The question will be whether you have a Likud-Kadima package or a Likud-YB centered package; a lot of the hawkish parties of the right are very hawkish to the point of either redrawing the Israel-Palistine map to put Arab-centric areas of Israel into Palistine and annex Jewish-centric areas of Palistine (YB stance) or to take over the West Bank and strongly encourage the Arabs there to leave (National Union's stance).

The Likud-Kadima package would make the most sense, but Kadima is made up of a lot of moderate ex-Likudites. Would the Republicans be willing to work with John McCain if he took the most RINOy third of the GOP and formed his own party? That's casting McCain as Sharon and ignoring Sharon's political death (he's still alive but out of commission after a stroke); to continue the analogy, you'd have to have Kay Bailey Hutchinson running the RINO Party after McCain's forced retirement.

They might if they were in a parlimentary system and needed his help. We'll see in the days to come.

Shreaded Tweets

It's bad theology, but give me some poetic licence; there seems to be a little of John Lennon's instant karma going with Andrew Bynum's knee injury. A hard Bynum foul against Charlotte's Gerald Wallace put Wallace in the hospital with a collapsed lung last week, now Bynum is out of commission for 8-12 weeks. A double irony was that Bynum's injury was via friendly fire; Kobe Bryant got knocked down going for a layup and landed on Bynum's legs.

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What to say of last night's Super Bowl? It was one of the best endings in Super Bowl history, a 16-0 Arizona run capped with a Larry Fitzgerald scamper, only to be topped by a final Steeler drive with Santinio Holmes' tap-dance TD catch for the game-winner. Methinks that that will take Dwight Clark's The Catch to get the 49ers to their first Super Bowl down a peg on the highlight reel.

Ads? The Career Builder ad with the poor punched-out koala was cute, the Teleflora one was funny on a PG-13 level and the Hulu ad with Alec Baldwin's deadpan "Because we're aliens and that's how we roll" delivery was my #1, along with the E-Trade Broken Wings ad.

Shreaded Tweets

We've got a nasty winter storm due in Lexington tomorrow; we're looking at 3-5 inches of snow and sleet before the Zamboni shows up tomorrow afternoon. Normally, Sullivan U is the last to close up the campus for the day, but we did have three snow-ice days last year. Hopefully the system looses some steam; Oklahoma got hammered.

Right now, school is one. The campus director sent this out earlier this afternoon-" At this time, Monday 2/26/09 2:30 p.m., no decision has been made regarding tomorrow’s schedule." Then, he caught his typo-"The date in the e-mail below should be 1/26/09…my crystal ball can’t predict tomorrow’s weather let alone a month ahead."

I guess I was reading what he meant the first time. I didn't catch it either at first.

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Call this Three Degrees of Super Bowl; I was leaning towards rooting for Arizona in Sunday's Super Bowl with their historic doormat status (if they got in, there is hope for the Lions) and their evangelical QB Kurt Warner and his rags-to-riches-to-journeyman-to-riches story.

Eileen just noted another reason. She has a fellow Humble High alum playing for the Cards; DE Bertand Berry. His mom was Eileen's Econ teacher at HHS.

I can't think of any Midland High alums who have recently made the NFL; Howard Mudd played for the 49ers in the 60s and has been an NFL offensive line coach for decades-per his Wikipedia, "His 33-year tenure as an assistant coach in the NFL is currently the longest." He was with the Colts during their Super Bowl run a few years ago.

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Here's a darker football story from metro Louisville; a high school coach is being indicted for reckless homicide for a heat stroke death of one of his players last summer.
Pleasure Ridge Park High is the school; doesn't that sound like something you'd make up for an upscale high school for a TV movie?

Seriously, this might have coaches thinking twice about overheating their players if a mistake can land you in prison. Suing the coach, which the parents are doing, is understandable, but you'll be seeing a lot less warm-weather practices nationwide if he does serve time.

What might work better are some sort of best-practices guidelines under which coaches can know their on the right side of the line; don't have them out in X degree weather or when the heat index gets over Y, if it's between F and G, only work them out for a hour or less and make sure to get them plenty of water (one of the alleged oversights of the coach here).

Shreaded Tweets

New job description for Mitch McConnell-RINO herder: "He'll need to keep GOP moderates from straying." Cats are easier to herd.

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Belated congratulations to Florida for another title. One oddity, at least in this sports era, is Tim Tebow's decision to come back for his senior year. Yes, he would be an odd fit in a lot of NFL offenses, but I'd love to see him take a shot at it. That will have to keep for a year at least; he gets to pester UK for another year.

Why couldn't a team run a two-offense set, with a Tebow-like option QB running normal downs and a more conventional pocket passer QB for passing downs? When Tebow turns pro, I could see his team going back to the Florida '06 model, where Tebow runs an option package on a third of the downs and has your regent QB (holding down the kingdom until the boy king is ready to rule) doing the passing downs.

That will give QBs like Pat White an option other than converting to WR when they run out of college eligibility.

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Another sad note; Tony Dungy is hanging it up. I was just starting to blog in 2002 when he got the heave-ho from Tampa Bay. Jon "Chucky" Gruden did get the Bucs to the Super Bowl the next year, but Dungy had the last laugh by turning Indy into a perrinial power.

He'll have a lot of ministries to spend time on, but he loses the bully pulpit of the NFL. Hopefully, he'll stay in the public eye and continue to be a good witness.

Shreaded Tweets

Obama has restated his preference for a college playoff, summing up the conventional football wisdom pretty well here-

"I think Utah has a pretty good claim," Obama told the network. "They're undefeated. I think USC, which had a great Rose Bowl, beat Penn State pretty badly. They've got a pretty good claim to being No. 1. Florida and Oklahoma both have a claim. Texas, at this point, has got to feel like, 'Well, we did OK, too.'

I'm not sure if Utah has a legal case or not, but when you can go into NOLA and decisively beat a 12-1 Alabama team, you have to be in the picture for a national title. However, there are enough people with midmajorphobia to ever get a Utah or a Boise State into the top two and into a title game as presently constituted.

I'd like a eight-team field, which you can do with the four classic BCS bowls serving as the quarterfinals and having semis and finals during mid January.

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Obama goes on in the ESPN piece

"I think a football playoff makes sense. I've spoken about this quite a bit, and I think if you look at knowledgeable sports fans, they agree with me. But, you know, I've got to pick and choose my battles. I probably am going to be spending more time focusing on creating three million more jobs."

Here's a little back-of-the-envelope math. Three million jobs times, say, a $50,000 a year salary ($40,000 in wages and $10K in benes and overhead). That comes to a modest $150 billion a year.

They're talking about a stimulus package of about five times that amount; $800 billion is the figured bandied about, plus or minus $50 billion. Are we talking about stimulating the economy or liberal libidos?

The Trouble With Kansas...

... is that it's rather icy. I fell on my kiester getting out of the car here in Emporia as we make our way north to Rockford for Eileen's cousin's wedding.

I don't think I've been in Kansas before; we ran into the edge of a cold front as we stopped for the night. One of the oddities I ran into was cattle pens on I-35. As it turns out, it's a spot for ranchers to bring in their cattle, since that passage of I-35 goes about 35 miles between exits; it's noted for being a good spot to watch for pronghorn antelope.

Add Braum's to your list of interesting places to eat; it's a regional dairy and fast-food chain we ran into to for dinner in Oklahoma. It is a bit like Culver's in Big 10 territory, except that they have a dairy/convenience store along with a restaurant/ice cream shop. It was way too cold to be thinking about ice cream, but the chicken fingers and hamburgers went over well. They seem to be Oklahoma City based, getting tentacles into neighboring states.

Braum's is an interesting story of vertical integration, where they own their own farms and dairies.

We'll see what interesting new things I see as we make our way through the rest of Kansas, Missouri and Iowa on our way to Rockford.

Thursday Musings

It's too easy a shot to get in a global warming dig when you have records for cold getting set, but I know at least one transplanted Midwesterner (my mother-in-law) who will be happy with this news item-Houston got snow last night; it's the earliest snow on record there. I can happily live without any snow (New Years Eve in shorts is my idea of nice weather from my Florida days), but others miss having at least a bit of winter.

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Interesting doings in Springfield; the state AG is poised to press unfit-to-serve charges before the state Supreme Court, which would force him aside and let the LG run the state and possibly pick a short-term replacement for Obama.

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There are a number of things that can make you feel old. One happened yesterday when I got the new textbook for my FIN 542 class; the 9th edition of Brealy and Myers' Principles of Corporate Finance. I did my Intermediate Finance as an undergrad out of the 2nd edition and did my MBA Corporate Finance class out of the 3rd; the 2nd edition is still in my office bookshelf.

Another feelin'-old moment is seeing CC Sabathia get his bongo-buck contract from the Yankees. I can remember reading Terry Pluto a decade or so ago, back when he was with the Akron Beacon Journal, bragging on this big stud of a lefty coming through the Indians farm system, and now he's the richest pitcher on the planet.

Monday Musings

Interesting news day with a lot of bloggable topics. I'm keeping an eye on a capital budgeting computer lab tonight, so time for some old-fashioned bloggin'.

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The cabinet post nominations became official. Hillary at State, Gates staying on at DoD, and interestingly, Janet Napolitano as the Homeland Security chief. The Arizona governor was a point person on immigration issues, as AZ is ground zero for border control issues.

Other picks, like Marine general James Jones, were rumored well in advance; most of the comments have him down as being a good, smart soldier and a good pick. The conservative pundits like to note that the undersecretaries may be where Obama will stash the lefties, but we're largely getting a center-left cabinet so far.

The one possible worry might be UN ambassador Susan Rice; she's not Condi's kid sister even though she's a sistah. She was in charge of the Africa desk at the State department in the Clinton years, which can be a double-edged sword. She might lean towards a more southern-centric help-the-poor foreign policy, but that might also bring a few African votes into the US camp if the US needs to twist arms in the UN and elsewhere.

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We're still looking for the two negative GDP quarters definition of recession, but the NBER has pegged the end of the last growth period as December 2007; we've been going slowly downhill since then. That's about right. Hopefully, the low oil and gas prices will help turn things around.

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On that note, I saw a bumper sticker on an Obamaista car; it may not be verbatim, but the gist was-"When Bush took office, the price of oil was $1.46/gallon." I'm not quite sure of the exact figure on the sticker, but this site has the price in 1/01 down as $1.51/gallon, so we'll call it close enough for political rhetoric.

The gas station across the way as I spied that had prices at $1.69. 12% inflation in eight years isn't that bad, but whata ride. Bush policies had somewhat of a hand in that wild ride, but there was a lot of (as we'd say in econometrics) exogenous variables that helped that roller coaster along.

Friday Musings

Here's a fun one from the BBC, back in Richard Hall's old stomping grounds of Swansea, Wales-

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated". So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.

There were at least two sets of people out to lunch, one literally and one figuratively.

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There have been arrests in the UK Obama effigy case; two UK students were charged with burglary and disorderly conduct. The latter is for the effigy and the former is stealing the clothes from a frat to make the Obama-masked scarecrow out of.

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I'm not sure how this fits in the big picture, but a big ethanol maker, VeraSun, seems about to go bankrupt. It got burned during the last quarter on hedging the cost of corn, losing a lot of money as the price of corn went down. That combined with a drop in the value of ethanol given the cratering of gas prices and a bad credit market created an environment where solid firms can't get a loan in a pinch.

I've got a little bit of money in the stock that I put in just before this announcement. Even so, it may well bounce back, for the company had $1.5 billion dollars in book value as of the end of June (third quarter stats should be forthcoming shortly) and the market is valuing it at $75 million.

I saw another one of my stocks, Gramercy Capital, come back from the dead, as a respectable third quarter report saw its stock rise from 75 cents to $2.66. Still a long way to go to get back to a book value of close to $20/share, but it's a start.

[Update 11/2. I think you're a bit optimistic, Jay; let me know what you're smoking ;-).

One problem with a $100 forecast is that the stock is a REIT, where they have to pass on any profits to shareholders, including realized capital gains; REITS act like mutual funds in that they don't pay income taxes as long as they pass their profits on in dividends.

Thus, if they were to get to a $100 a share, they'd have to have their assets go up in real value 5-fold from present book value. Unless you're seeing some kind of land rush like late 1980s Japan, where real estate prices are going through the roof, that ain't gonna happen, especially with the garden-variety bank branch buildings that are Gramercy's stock in trade.

I'll take a rise to NAV at $20 right now, thank you very much.]

Evening Musings

Lot of little things on my mind, and some big things.

One big thing is a Fed rate cut. You can tell we're in desperate times when a half-percent move by the Fed is restrained; a lot of folks were expecting a 75 basis point move. However, at a 1% Fed Funds rate, you don't have too many more bullets in the monetary policy revolver.

Hopefully, the markets have hit bottom. Yesterday's big rally may well have signaled the bottom of the market. One can only hope.

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39 Degrees with 10 MPH winds, giving us a wind-chill factor of 32. That's the wintery forecast for tonight's remake of the Phillies-Rays game 5. We're in uncharted territory, as a possibly deciding game of a World Series gets 48 hours off during a rain delay. You could see starters coming in to relieve, especially for Tampa Bay, as they have no tomorrow if they lose.

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That's about the weather we have here in Lexington. We had frost warnings out last night and again tonight; unseasonably cold for Kentucky.

Another thing that's unseasonably cold is the reactionary dis that the junior senator from Illinois got on the UK campus, as somebody decided to hang him in effigy.

Here's where I could get myself in hot water. I know all too well of the history of lynchings in the south, of which Kentucky is a part. Thus, that's something that you just don't do to a black candidate's image. It's evil from the get-go, double-evil for the KKK-style message that it sends.

However, the folks in California who did something similar to Sarah Palin get a pass, relatively speaking. The guy would likely be in prison had he done the same thing to an Obama likeness.

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Speaking of Obama, Obama is speaking shortly. Some people are ticked that baseball moved back the start of tonight's game to make room for The One's informercial. Last I checked, we're in the process of electing a president, and waiting 10 minutes to clear the deck for a speech isn't a huge infringement. Things should be over by 10 anyways, given that they're starting things in the bottom of the 6th.

Library Musings

I have to set aside more planned blogging time; I've got out of the daily habit the last few months, blogging once or twice a week. Blog Depression?

Anyways, Eileen's off book hunting at the library and I head to the computer section as is my custom for a burst of weekend blogging.

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I know I've been following stocks too much when I saw a piece for the BYU-Utah State game yesterday and thought, "USU? Didn't I own them for a few days in the early days of my portfolio?"

Yep. Lost $27on them, but sold out before they went down further; bought at $5.06, got out at $4.79 and they're now going for $4.15. C'est la guerre. "La guerre."

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A decade too late, but OJ finally goes up the river, or at least up the dry river bed in Nevada. This case is screwy, where OJ got some cohorts and tried to take back some of his paraphernalia that he lost in the Nicole civil case at gunpoint; it sounds like something that would be a comic relief subplot for CSI, but it actually happened.

More blogging later; we're off towards lunch.

Calm Before the Storm

It's been a busy day, far busier than most days, for it was my first trip to the ER as an adult; I don't remember the trip I took as a toddler when I got into the rubbing alcohol and had my stomach pumped, so this was my first coherent experience. Eileen had a bad lower abdominal pain that raised some appendicitis flags, but it was merely a very bad infection; she's on good drugs and is sleeping at present.

Anyway, we got home just in time to catch the UK-Louisville game; about the only thing more embarrassing that getting shut out is losing X-2, which happened to the 'Ville, as an intentional grounding in the end zone by UK's novice quarterback Mike Hartline accounted for both UL points in the 27-2 win. It was the UK defense that carried the day, running two fumbles back for touchdowns and running an interception back inside the 10 to set up the other TD.

The second fumble return looked like the shotputter's 4X100 relay at the Graves Relays, where 300-pounder Myron Pryor ran a fumble back 72 yards with a UL center in hot but futile pursuit. The UL offensive line must be studying First Amendment law, for they couldn't do any Pryor restraint today; he forced the other fumble that UK scored upon.

The other big news of the day is Gustav's pending arrival in LA. So far, the NOLA folks have learned from Katrina and gotten all but everyone out. A few hard cases always stay behind, but Fox has christened the Crescent City the Big Empty.

Busses and trains have taken the car-less folks out, contraflow started yesterday to get the folks with car out of harms ways ASAP, pets were being allowed into shelters and busses to not give folks an excuse, and even the homeless were getting coaxed to get out of Dodge. Last time, the car-less got stuck; this time, the careless and clueless are the once staying outside of the emergency workers and network reporters.

Bobby Jindal seemed to be well in charge along with Ray Nagin; Nagin was even literally telling his people to get their butts out of town and pledging to play hardball with looters. Amtrak was shuttling folks up to Memphis and the National Guard was in town to keep the Five Finger Discount Mall from opening up in everyone's absence. Post-Katrina, I remember footage of people looting a Winn-Dixie and someone hauling off their Chek store-brand soda; everyone else must have beat her to the Coke and Pepsi.

The first night of the convention got canceled, which might be a blessing in disguise. It will be harder to make McCain W2.0 when W is a no-show. Governor Palin needs to loose the hoop earrings; she looks like she just got back from hitting Claire's with her BFFs.

So far, so good. However, this could get ugly quickly.

Midweek Musings

No, I haven't dropped off the planet. Teaching and being a husband has been keeping me busy, along with my new project, The Stochastic Wok. I'm not getting a whole lot of traffic so far, but I am putting up a great track record of stock picks in the six week's I've been at it. The average buy recommendation stock has been up 6.5%, whereas the not-buys are down 2.7%. If I keep that up, I'll get some attention.

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Gustav Mauler. It used to be spelled Mahler, but unlike the classical composer, the new Gustav will rock you like a hurricane. The five-day projections from NOAA have it just off the Mississippi delta by Monday.

Now we see how Bobby Jindal handles a crisis; Katrina is one major reason he, rather than Kathleen Blanco, is in the governor's mansion now. Ray Nagin is heading back from Denver to oversee possible evacuations and Jindal has already declared a state of emergency and has the National Guard on standby.

Jindal might have to give any convention speech via remote, since he'll not be in the market for political trips to Minnesota next week.

Pray for the Haitians who are recovering from Gustav's visit, the Cubans who'll be next on the itinerary, and the Gulf Coasters who should get a wallop. Our pockets might get a wallop if Gustav hits the refineries on the Gulf, so top off the gas tanks.

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Speaking of Denver, we can finally get the "presumptive" modifier out of the way; Obama now is the Democratic nominee.

Sunday Musings

A few interesting things found while surfing YouTube this weekend.

(1) I never knew that the intro to the Alan Parsons Project's Eye in the Sky that gets famously used as the Chicago Bulls' lineup introduction had a name; Sirius.

(2) One of the things I was looking for was a Glen Campbell rendition of the William Tell Overture, which I found (it's far better than you'd think) when I stumbled into a Hungarian trio called Gracia's version. I'd heard of a Britsh quartet of classical lady fiddlers called Bond that Gracia could be compared to, but the three Magyar mama violinists rock classical nicely, better than what I've heard of Bond; here's another Gracia video doing Brahms.

At minimum, they're easier on the eyes than Glen Campbell, although I use it as background music. Really.

(3) A few other classic instrumentals of the past for anyone interested; Lily Was Here, Hocus Pocus, Classical Gas, Machine Gun, Love's Theme, Frankenstein and Emerson, Lake and Palmer's take on Fanfare for the Common Man.

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Issac Hayes passed on over the weekend. Interestingly, he did more than the Shaft theme and play Chef on South Park. He was also a Stax songwriter in the 60s, writing some of Sam and Dave's hits, like Soul Man (who younger folks would associate with the Blues Brothers) and Hold On, I'm Coming.

He had sat out of South Park since '06 after they went after fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise in their slaughterhouse-for-sacred-cows style. South Park proceeded to kill off Chef in more ways than one, both assassinating Chef's character and then feeding him to the wolves (well, a bear and a mountain lion, but give me some poetic license).

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Bad news in Georgia. The Georgians are holding fire, but the Russians aren't. If things don't improve, we might be seeing the pre-game show for WWIII, where the US might be called in to defend Georgia; the Russians are calling for the resignation of the pro-western Georgian president.

Friday Musings

It's interesting that as I was joking about Georgia having their mascot Uga lead the charge into South Ossetia, I backed into the factoid that Uga VI passed on earlier this summer. So, the top-ranked Bulldogs will have a rookie mascot to lead them into the 2008 campaign. Uga VII will make his debut at their home opener against Georgia Southern.

At least three Georgia players have been suspended for the opener. Georgia Southern is a good I-AA school that is slated to move up with the big boys in 2010. I smell Appy State in the making; it might be a better game that you'd think.

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The locals will be interested in the PGA; UK grad J.B. Holmes is the leader in the clubhouse at -1 as I write. 2003 British Open champ Ben Curtis and relatively young Brit Justin Rose are in at even, with Korean Charlie Wi fitting in at even as well.

Another Singh, Jeev Milkha (an Indian who plays the European tour mostly), is still on the course at -1, as is Sergio Garcia. Lefty's at even and Frank Esposito  is at +1; that gave ESPN blogger Jason Sobel an excuse to pull out the "Jesus saves... and Espo scores on the rebound" graffiti from the classic Bruins of the early 70s.

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It wasn't long ago when our jaws dropped when oil hit $100/barrel. Now, it's heading back down towards that, getting down to $116/barrel today. The stock market is responding favorably.

DSL Musings

Good news; we dumped the temperamental cable modem from the captive apartment-complex cable company and switched over to DSL through Windstream, the local phone company. Now, we can download stuff without getting painful delays; the old cable must have had a limited amount of bandwidth for the whole complex, for complex stuff like YouTube files downloaded when the system wanted to, which wasn't often.

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The word-plays are too easy. Broadway Brett or Brett the Jet. Anyways, Mr. Favre's #4 is now in green and white rather than green and yellow. Will he have to fight incumbent Chad Pennington for the job? No, sir. Pennington was dropped like a cell phone call in the middle of nowhere; he may find work in either Minnesota or Miami.

If Farve stays healthy, he could be the best QB ever to wear the Jets uniform; easily the best since a certian playboy #12 graced the sidelines. The Jets haven't been to a Super Bowl since that Namath-gaurenteed win in 1969. Few teams have had that long of a drought; Detroit, the Cardinals and New Orleans have never gone and Kansas City hasn't been back since their 1970 win.

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Speaking of Detroit, they've got the mayor behind bars; Kwame Kirtpatrick was under indictment on purgery charges and went over to Windsor without court permission, breaking his bond.

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I haven't chimed in yet on that other Kwame that hit town, new Piston big guy Kwame Brown. He was a bust as a first-overall pick for the Team Formerly Known as the Bullets and has bouced from Chicago to the Lakers to Memphis before signing a mid-level exemption contract with Detroit.

However, as a journeyman off the bench, he could be a good role-player for Detrot.

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On a more serious note, we've got impeachment hearing going with Dennis Kucinich nowhere to be found; it's Musharref that's on the block, as the newly elected legislature is looking to give him the heave-ho.

That will make things somewhat problematic for US-Pakistani relations. Depending on who replaces him, we could have better relations and more cooperation with reeling in the Taliban, or a nationalist who wants to ignore the US, or an inept leader. The Pakistani opposition is fractured and dysfunction, which is why Musharref staged a coup a decade ago.

Tuesday Musings

A few interesting news items coming across the wires on my birthday. I'm not a big birthday person, and that works out just fine today, since I have to teach tonight. No party, not even a dinner.

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Here's an interesting story that you can put into the multicultural bucket; a Tyson plant in Tennessee is swapping out Labor Day as a paid holiday in favor of the Ramadan-ending Eid al-Fitr. The plant has about 20% Somali immigrants on their staff. It's interesting that Labor Day got ditched instead of King Day, but Eids is on October 1st this year, so nuking a fall holiday might have made sense.

First of all, if this was a factory in a Jewish-centric area giving Yom Kippur off, we'd not be she-dogging.

Secondly, don't blame Tyson, blame these guys-

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Tropical Storm Edouard is on my radar; it is just east of where my in-laws live.

There are a lot of interesting tools available on the web; Mapquest has a function where you can plug in latitude and longitude and get a map of the area. That way, I can convert that meteorological location and say, "Yeah, that's about to hit 1960, it's about 20 miles east of Atascosita."

Thankfully, it's just a TS, but still carries a lot of rain; the Houston area is rather prone to flooding.

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What's it that James said about being a teacher?

Thomas Howell could get up to six months in jail on the misdemeanor charge when he's sentenced Sept. 4.

Howell says he was on his way to First Commandment Church of the Living God in the East Walnut Hills neighborhood when April Evans cut him off on June 23. During Monday's trial, Howell testified that he has a gun and permit but denied ever removing the weapon from its holster.

But a Hamilton County municipal court judge sided with Evans, who said the preacher threatened to shoot her and called her names as their cars chased each other.

There are ten commandments, last I checked (unless you're a Republican, then there are eleven), and he's doing a shabby job at a lot of the others, not to mention flunking love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself.

Library Musings

We're off running Saturday errands, getting massive husband points, especially when I swung into Jo Ann's for brads for VBS; you know you're married when you (a) go into a craft store alone or (b) swing by the feminine products section whi

Eileen will be running herd over the second graders while I run herd over my mix of undergrad and grad students. I'd be avaible to teach a day VBS, but they have it in the evenings at our church.

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We may see the ghost of Payne Stewart at the British Open; plus-fours haven't looked this good since he passed on. Right now, defending champ Padriag Harrington is the leader in the clubhouse with a +4, one back of the silver Shark, Greg Norman. Second round leader KC Choi has dropped back to +4 as I go to press.

From what I saw of things this moring, the winds was going at a 30MPH+ clip, making normal golf probleatic and even making it hard to keep balls stationary on the green; they were noting that there is no hard-and-fast rule for how much wind is too much, but if you can't have a ball stay put on the green, it's too windy to play and they'd shut things down.

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The Barack Obama "Am I Experienced?" World Tour is on its South Asia swing, hitting Afghanistan today. He likes this area, wanting to send more troops; we could probably use a mini-surge there, but it's funny where he's hot to send more here yet wants a full pullout of Iraq.

Friday Musings

Things are going well; we're four weeks into the summer quarter, and things are moving along fairly smoothly, save for a flu-like set of symptoms that laid me low last night and today. We had a campus-wide picnic yesterday, so I had hot dogs for both lunch and dinner (they had a 11-2 shift for the day students and a 5-7 shift for the night students). I'm not sure if it wasn't a bad hot dog not cooperating or a rotavirus, which is the technical term for the stomach/intestinal flu.

For years, we jokingly called such a critter the Roto-Rooter flu, for it cleaned you out on both ends. Well, it may better be pronounced Rota-Rooter.

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The British Open might be interesting viewing this weekend. The leader board is shark-infested, with Greg Norman only a shot off of KC Choi's lead. Last year's champ Padraig Harrington is three back, as is US Open runner up Rocco Mediate.

That's a 53-year-old Greg Norman, set to bust the oldest-major winner record wide open, if Rocco doesn't do it. Hey, marrying Chris Everett must suit him well.

The other name a bit back on the leader board is a blast from the past; Jean Van de Velde. It was nine years ago at the British Open that he had probably the worse choke in golf history, coming into the 18th on Sunday up three, then making triple bogey to fall into a playoff that he lost. He's at +4, five back, but is a hot round from getting up into the short-version of the leader board. If Mediate or Norman can't bag a title, getting VdV to shake that image would be nice.

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Some interesting politics down in Argentina, where a tax on food exports (not imports, mind you, exports; they wanted to keep the food at home) was narrowly voted down in their Senate, with the Vice President voting against the government to break the tie. Picture Dick Chaney voting down a Republican must-pass bill, and you get a bit of the drama. That's going to be an interesting cabinet meeting, especially if president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner cusses like Hillary can when mad.

That's good for food prices, good for free markets and bad for left-populism. Between the FARC getting put on the run in Columbia and the Peronistas getting shot down in Argentina, it's not been a good summer for South American leftists.

Far From Half Empty

There are a number of things to be thankful for in our modern world, even as we work through the ramifications of $4/gallon gas; I saw that barrier breeched here in Lexington today, as the station I stop at to buy some two-liters of pop at had gas at $4.15 per.

This laptop I'm blogging on is one of those neat things. It's WiFi enabled in such a way that I'm automatically logged into Sullivan U's wireless system when I'm on campus and on an internal network at home. We're starting to take WiFi for granted, and that's a bit sad. The next step might be city-wide wireless at affordable rates; the cell-phone companies are moving in that direction and may wind up competing with DSL and cable for home-based customers in the not too distant future.

Also, the one-gig flash drive that I carry around in my left pocket (or slide into a USB slot at various computers at work and home) is a little marvel. Back in 1996, when I started my computer store, a 850MB hard drive was a viable bargain hard drive for a PC, with 1.2 Gig being normal and 1.6 gig being a bit souped up.

Speaking of cell-phones, what did we do without them? Miss a lot of calls and use pay phones a lot more. I recall speaking from I-10 in the bayous of Louisianan to one of my grad students who was checking on a grade while on vacation last month, and it didn't feel odd. What brought the cell phone to mind was my fielding an appointment-reminder-call from my doctors office as I was leaving for campus just now; in the old days, I'd have had to of hustled back into the apartment to field the call rather than coolly grabbing the phone out of my left pocket.

People often complain about the US losing ground; in many areas, it's more the world catching up, which isn't bad for the US. Those richer and more competitive countries can afford more stuff, some of which will be American stuff.

So, if the rest of the world is giving the US a game in basketball, it's a credit to the world, not a debit to us. If we have a Swiss guy and a Spanish guy going mano-a-mano for five hours in the Wimbledon final, it means that tennis is no longer a purely Anglospherian thing, or that the Anglosphere has expanded out to cover a lot of the world.

We're also getting older better. We're seeing a 41-year-old mom breaking records in the freestyle sprints in swimming and a 35-year old guy still competitive in the 50 free; normally, you'd see the long-hairs hanging in there in the distance events and leaving the sprints to the young'ens.

We're sending all those folks off to Beijing; a still nominally-Communist Beijing, but one that has far more freedoms that we would have expected three decades ago when Mao passed on. One of the reasons we have such high oil prices is that the Chinese economy has grown rather nicely under Deng and his successors, who still keep politics and religion under a short-to-microscopic leash but allow for a lot of economic and cultural freedom; that freedom has had many folks trade in their Mao suit and bicycle for a car and designer clothes, and they're competing for that worldwide oil supply.

We're still the world's melting pot. Watching the US gymnastics trials a couple of weekends ago was interesting. One gal was the daughter of a Soviet gymnast, another was the daughter of a German gymnast, while a third was the daughter of Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants; to top it off, a Chinese immigrant was coaching a couple of the top gymnasts and a Romanian immigrant was overseeing the whole US team. The guys weren't as diverse, but the son of Indian immigrants just missed making the men's team.,

The glass isn't full, but it's far from empty.

Sunday Musings

I'm back in Lexington after an interesting trip; the last few days have been largely too busy visiting friends and driving to blog, and I'm rather exhausted after getting home yesterday afternoon.

That fatigued state left me in good stead to watch a lot of the US Open yesterday and today.. and possibly tomorrow, if I'm still too pooped to do much prepping for Summer term that starts a week from tomorrow. Yep, they'll be playing tomorrow, since Tiger drained a 12-foot birdie putt on 18 to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate tomorrow; all Mediate could do is watch from the clubhouse (he was in the next-to--last group and had already finished) and mutter "Unbelievable. I knew he'd make it." They play 18-hole playoffs the next day in the US Open, unlike the three-hole overtimes of the British Open and Masters and the sudden death of the PGA.

We've been talking a bit about Lakeland on the blog as of late, with Todd Bentley and Dontrelle Willis getting sent down to the Tiger's single-A farm club there; Mediate has Lakeland roots as well, having gone to college at Florida Southern in Lakeland. While the Bentley pilgrims would be more comfortable theologically with Southeastern College, a big AoG school in town, I'd recommend a visit to the Methodist-affiliated Florida Southern (not to be confused with the big public USF in Tampa)  and it's striking Frank Lloyd Wright designed campus.

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Speaking of the Tigers, they seem to have gotten their acts in order and have a six game winning streak going. They're now only 6 back of Chicago and have a fighting shot at winning the Central if people start playing up to specs.

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I haven't gotten around to comment on Tim Russert's passing on Friday. He had Democrat roots, but could be depended upon to ask the tough questions of whomever was on his beat. If he skewered your guy, it was often due to the fact that he had it coming; you didn't wear any open-toe shoes on Meet the Press, for Russert would call you on each and every flip-flop in your wardrobe. Here's a good Red State obit and another good one from Get Religion.

Russert played things pretty much down the middle, with his blue-collar Catholic roots that stayed with him to the grave. Some people "outgrow" church when they mature, but Russert was a devout Catholic who's sense of ethics made him sure to call BS when it was needed.

Russert may well be the last of his generation of iconic network-news guys to leave the stage. All three of the network anchors of the 90s have moved on and Russert's top rival for best interviewer on broadcast TV, Ted Koppel, is retired. Cable TV has more must-see people that the network news does, even when you factor out the talk-show hosts; I'd be more inclined to watch Shepard Smith or Anderson Cooper than any of the big three network anchors.

That doesn't bode well for network news.