Boyd

Remember when we had real problems with interest rates and the stock market and muggers and we were all just a few dollars from moving way back in the woods and living off the land?

Reuters:

...television therapist Dr. Phil McGraw revealed that Baldwin had called him for advice on Thursday...

Wonder if he'll call McDreamy when it's time for a check up.

Schilling:

So for one of the first times this blog serves one of the purposes I’d hoped it would if the need arose. The media hacked and spewed their way to a day or two of stories that had zero basis in truth. A story fabricated by the media, for the media. The best part was that instead of having to sit through a litany of interviews to ‘defend’ myself, or my teammates, I got to do that here.

This is a shocker.

FT:

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

Spinal Tap has it figured.

Coyle:

"They're not that environmentally conscious, but they've heard of global warming," said Reiner, whose other films include "When Harry Met Sally" and "Stand By Me." "Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing — that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler."

James 'Cool Papa' Bell:

So many people say I was born too early, but that's not true - they opened the doors too late.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. It was difficult for my grandmother, and for all my relatives from the miye. It was difficult for me, too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values.

The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.

Here.

Sugg:

But there’s one part of the country that’s especially quick to throw taxpayers’ money at businesses in the hope of creating jobs and raising tax revenue. For the last 70 years, the idea that businesses need special inducements to locate themselves in the South has become ingrained in the region’s public policy. The general theme in Southern politics is to be “pro-business,” which politicians interpret to mean pro-subsidy.

Here.

Cooney:

As all of Major League Baseball commemorated the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, there wasn’t a black player on either team in our series finale against UALR.

Kevin Cooney is the head baseball coach at Florida Atlantic.

This is an interesting issue. I've been to a bunch of Elon games this year (Quite a deal. Beautiful setting. Easy parking. Good team. Free.). As few black players as there are on Elon's roster, one that I can think of, at the A&T series it was a bit more surprising how many whites are on A&T's roster.

I'm generally a big fan of letting people do what they want and if black kids don't want to play baseball, so be it. The culture has moved on from baseball to football and basketball and black kids helped drive the change for a number of reasons that Cooney cites - some of them internal and some external.

So is it more of a problem that the number of blacks playing baseball is dwindling for blacks or for baseball? Baseball. No doubt.

Update: More here.

Reading Lincoln's Second Inaugural.

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Whatever else you think of Imus, thus far he hasn't tried to use the free speech defense a la the Dixie Chicks.

Hirsi Ali:

In October 2002, I flew to California. It was the first time I had ever been in the United State, and I realized almost immediately that my preconceptions of America were completely ludicrous. I was expecting rednecks and fat people, with lots of guns, very aggressive police, and overt racism - a caricature of a caricature. In reality, of course, I saw people living perfectly well-ordered lives...

Wonder how someone intelligent, ambitious and educated who grew up in Africa, the Middle East and Europe could end up with such a dismal impression of the US?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma's words of comfort and encouragement. "It's just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, he's almost finished." When the sewing was finished, the man cut the thread off with his teeth.

That is all I can recall of it.

She was five.

Jack won his Pack's Pinewood Derby last Saturday. Competition was stiff.

Here for the grisly details.

I will say that I forgot what I had sent in and reading Percy's post I got to my first entry and cracked up. At least one person out there thinks I'm funny.

Look, if you wrote 'You Oughta Know' about Joey from Full House you don't really have the right to make fun of anyone else. Evah. However, this is pretty damn amusing.

As irritating a human being as Stossel is, when he's right, he's right.

Stossel:

Media exposure clouds our judgment about real-life odds. Of course, it doesn't help that viewers are as ignorant about probability as reporters are.

Football is about working. Baseball is about living.