Modern day college football

Here in Evans, Georgia the major universities in the area are the University of Georgia, Clemson University, South Carolina University and Georgia Tech. The rabid fans of each school are numerous and the papers obviously cover them to varying extents. Today, there was an article on the U. of Georgia football team. The coach, Mark Richt, was questioned about the "character" of his players. Since April, 2004, 11 of his players have been arrested and 6 of his 19 incoming players (students recruited to join the school this Fall) are ineligible to play because of poor grades. There could be another one depending on the outcome of an investigation of alleged cheating by another player who also had a charge of battery associated with the cheating incident dropped. Richt says he is unsure what action to take against this player, but he did say his program is under control. This may be true if he compares his program with others in the area. South Carolina has had 12 students arrested since January and the school has admitted to 5 major NCAA violations and 7 others. Tennessee has also had 12 players arrested since February, 2004. Georgia Tech had to dismiss a player because he was the designated recipient of several pounds of marijuana sent through the mail. Tech is supposed to have the most intelligent students, also.
It seems to me the recruiting profiles being used by the coaches needs to be refined somewhat. It makes little sense to brag in February about how pleased you are with the recruiting class if you have to unlock the jails at the end of the summer to get them in pads.

Reports from Iraq

Most of the TV and print "journalists" in Iraq do their work from the Green Zone. The content of their reports consists of passing on reports from the field back to headquarters from the troups out in the field. This might be smart on their behalf, but you can't really get a feel for what is going on up close and personal reporting this way. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one reporter who is actually in the field. His name is Michael Yon. The travels all over Iraq and is now embedded with a group of soldiers from A Company, 1-24th Infantry Regiment. There is an E-mail service he has which will alert you when he has another report. The one I read today is really good and I recommend that you bookmark his site and sign up for the E-mails. You can do all that here.

Urban Outfitters not PC

Urban Outfitters clothing store is once again being targeted for controversial T-shirts that are viewed as racist.

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval and a group of Latino youths will hold a news conference today denouncing Urban Outfitters for selling T-shirts that bear what they deem a "racially offensive'' slogan.

The T-shirts, which read "New Mexico: Cleaner Than Regular Mexico,'' are inappropriate and "recycle an insulting image of Mexico and Mexicans that the Latino community has fought long and hard against,'' according to Sandoval's office.

Sandoval's office called the store a "repeat offender,'' eluding to a T-shirt sold in 2003 that read "Ghettopoly,'' and bore pictures of marijuana leaves and malt liquor bottles. The store stopped selling the shirts after black leaders protested them.

The store also offended some with a T-shirt it sold that said, "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl,'' which was surrounded by dollar signs. The company eventually altered the shirts and removed the dollar signs.

"Our community is outraged by this blatant display of derogatory stereotyping,'' said Sandoval, whose parents were born in Mexico.

More from Mark Steyn

For four years, much of the western world said, " Bomb us, and we agonise over the "root causes" (that is, what we did wrong). Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that "Islam is a religion of peace". Issue bloodcurdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush, Blair and Howard. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the "vast majority" of Muslims "jihad" is a harmless concept meaning "decaf latte with skimmed milk and cinnamon sprinkles".

Read it all here.

Lucky Bush

Politicians thrive when their enemies lend themselves to derision and scorn. Bush, for example, was re-elected in large part because, I think, he was demonized by a big fat slob like Michael Moore. Now I learn that Jane Fonda intends to tour the U.S. this Fall in a bus fueled with vegetable oil to protest the war in Iraq. How could he be so lucky?

What kind of slime did this?

Not even 24-hours after Private First Class Tim Hines's wife and family said goodbye at his funeral, American flags that had adorned their Fairfield yard were piled beneath a car and burned.

Hines' sister-in-law woke up to hear her car alarm around 5:30 a.m. and saw her car on fire.

As firefighters brought the fire under control they discovered a pile of around 20 American flags underneath the car.

Neighbors say Hines' wife's family had flags line their front yard and on the porch.

Those were taken as well as flags in neighboring yards.

Hines was injured in Iraq and flown to Walter Reed Hospital in the Washington, D.C. area, but succumbed to the injuries before he could return home.

Hines' wife Katy is eight-months pregnant with their second child. She buried her husband on Friday.

Katy Hines had just moved back into her parents' home and woke up to find her sister's car consumed by flames.

Military Report from Iraq

July 24, 2005: For thousands of Sunni Arabs who worked for Saddam’s security apparatus, the day of judgment is getting closer. Saddam’s enforcers rarely hid their identities, and many Kurds and Shia Arabs know the names, and faces, of the Sunni Arab thugs that tormented, and tortured them, and murdered their friends and family. These thugs have supported al Qaeda’s terror campaign in Iraq, and participated in some of the non-suicide attacks on Iraqis and foreigners. For the last two years, the enforcers were able to hide out in Sunni Arab towns and neighborhoods that were free of government control. But this provided only temporary refuge, and created other problems. The lack of police meant that criminal gangs, terrorist groups and warlord militias were in charge. These three groups didn’t always get along with each other. But they all left the old Saddam thugs alone. Now, with the government taking control of Sunni Arab areas, the Saddam thugs are in trouble, and getting desperate. These guys have several options. They can leave the country. Many have already done this. But there are no real sanctuaries for former Saddam killers. Syria is safe for the moment, but that is expected to change soon. Eventually, however, these guys can expect the war crimes indictments to catch up with them. If they stay in Iraq, they can either hope for an amnesty deal, or getting themselves back into power. Both of these options are being pursued, which means that violence and peace negotiations are both getting more intense. The problem here is that the Kurds and Shia Arabs are not willing to give a lot of Saddam’s killers a free pass. In response to that, the killers are getting more involved in the violence. Now Arab diplomats are being attacked. The message is clear; make a deal with the Sunni Arabs, or get more reminders of how Saddam stayed in power for so long. Playing it this way only makes more Iraqis determined to join the police and army, and go after the killers where they live, and bring them to justice (often on the spot.) The bullets are going both ways.

Democrats and terrorism

At every turn some liberal democratic senator can be heard declaring that we are not doing enough to fight or defend ourselves from terrorists. We are not spending enough. We are not doing enough to protect our chemical factories. We are not doing enough to guard against terror coming in through our ports. Our protection of trains and subways is not sufficient. We should be doing more to protect our food supply. Our borders are too porous and we should beef up that effort. The brilliance of all this is that when we are attacked again...and it will happen...they will come out and point to prior warnings that were not acted on to a sufficient extent or soon enough. The fact that there is no way we can provide unlimited resources to the effort and no way we can maintain a free society and achieve perfect defense. Bush will be blamed in a blizzard of demogoguery for failing at an impossible task.

Both Bush and Congress deserve blame for not setting any priorities in spending the money we do on home security. The slimy congressmen all insist on getting their "share" of the money even though some small town in Kansas is not a high terror target any more than some blue haired old lady is a threat to our air travel. In many cases, the small towns which do get their money just buy real nice police uniforms with it. Pathetic.

Biological Destiny

For some time now it has been apparent to me that if you have a marathon, for example, someone from Kenya is more likely to win it than someone from an Eskimo village in Alaska. Blacks predominate on NBA teams for a reason beyond culture. Turns out highly successful athletes are subjected to some of the most rigorous testing possible. Lance Armstrong, for example, has a heart 20% larger than normal, produces 1/3rd less lactic acid during exercise, and delivers oxygen to his legs at a higher rate than almost anyone alive. These studies and others suggest that in order to be a truly dominate athlete, one must be a genetic freak. Armstrong, it turns out, does not have one physical factor which distinguishes him from the rest of us, but in fact he has several extraordianry traits which exist in only a few hundred human beings. The odds of all these things being consolidated in one body are probably one in a billion.

Other examples? Michael Phelps, is an Olympic champion swimmer and propels himself through the water with feet that are truly like flippers. They are not only large (size 14), but also outrageously flexible. He can lie down flat on his back, legs outstretched and touch the tips of his toes to the floor. Mia Hamm, the soccer star, in some tests of her famous stamina, was found to produce less than one liter of sweat an hour--25-50% less than normal.

How long will it be before parents begin to test their youngsters to see how suited for the sport they are pushing them toward?

A toxic combination

When you start with bad science and add trial lawyers you really have a potential problem and that is what we see currently with Teflon. This substance has long been seen as a useful coating for cooking utensils, but on July 19th two law firms filed a class action suit on behalf of consumers regarding perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The lawyers claim the substance could be hazardous and they want DuPont to pay $5 billion.If the suit is successful whatever is left after attorney's fees would go to replace everyone's cookware and pay for medical monitoring and more research. Note that nobody has died or is even sick.
What happened is an EPA advisory panel concluded research with PFOA given in massive doses to rodents suggested that the substance was "likely" a carcinogen in humans. The problem is rodents are not just little people and in high doses the chemical probably makes the DNA-repair systems of rats and mice go haywire and tumors result. Be that as it may, the new report has nothing to do with Teflon on your cookware. PFOA is destroyed in the manufacturing process used to make Teflon. Several studies have looked at Teflon with an eye to find PFOA associated with Teflon and have come up empty (even the lawyers can't point to studies showing results to the contrary). This will not deter the slimy lawyers, however. They will only argue that DuPont must show that Teflon is not harmful to their consumers. Take that to some sections of Mississippi and Texas and you just won the lottery if you are a sleezy trial lawyer.

London Bombs

How long will it take subway riders in London to get off the train when someone with a backpack gets on?

Poor Bush

It just came on me today as I was driving along on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Smoky Mountains that the ultra left who considers poor George Bush to be such a bumbling idiot and inept in all previous undertakings is suddenly some raving genius who was able to dip into the pool of available lawyers and pluck out the one stealth candidate for the Supreme Court who will completely reverse all their liberal gains in the past 50 years. The right wing is afraid that he made the same mistake as his Daddy and we will have another Souter. I think the fears of the right are more realistic, but probably not well-founded.

CNN can't hide their position

We are on the road and don't have our usual news sources so we had to watch the press reveal that Judge Roberts was the President's choice for the Supreme Court on CNN. Within minutes they had a crawl under the picture of Judge Roberts which alternated between two facts. First, we were informed that he assisted President Bush in the 2000 recount. Next they informed us that he was a deputy to Ken Starr when he was Solicitor General. That should have been enough red meat for the dems to get their panties in a permanent wad. I predict a fight but not a war, however.

Ebonics is back

Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist.

The goal of the district's policy is to improve black students' academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the least and have the most dropouts and suspensions...

Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, commended the San Bernardino Board of Education for approving the policy in June. Texeira suggested that including Ebonics in the program would be beneficial for students. Ebonics, a dialect of American English that is spoken by many blacks throughout the country, was recognized as a separate language in 1996 by the Oakland school board.

If Ebonics is all that's keeping them interested, what's going to happen when they enter the real world, where Ebonics won't be the accepted form of communication?

Phthalates not scary?

Contrary to earlier reports, everyday exposure to phthalates -- chemical plasticizers used extensively in household products and in certain medical products -- may not have harmful effects on fertility in young men, a new study shows. Let's call it the Halloween Factor: if research shows even the most tentative risk to health from a chemical, the media will be all over it; but if further research finds that there is, in fact, no risk, then the media will largely ignore it.

Dr. Bosse A.G. Jonsson from Lund University Hospital, Sweden, and colleagues looked for associations between phthalate metabolite levels in urine and semen quality and reproductive hormone parameters in 234 young Swedish men entering the military.

There was "no clear pattern of associations" between any of the phthalate metabolites and any of the biomarkers of reproductive function measured.

In fact, exposure to phthalic acid seemed to be associated with improved reproductive function, as measured by several markers."

Good Week Award

Who had the best weekend in Europe? How about Lance Armstrong pulling ahead of the pack in the race up some mountain in France? Tiger Woods winning the British Open for his second major victory this year? Good choices, but it would be hard for either of them to challenge J.K. Rowling's selling 6.9 million Harry Potter books in 24 hours. May have to read one of her books one of these days.

Ben Stein makes a good point

In a NY Times article, Ben Stein who is on various talk and financial shows made the point that Phillip Purcell was just shown the door at Morgan Stanley, a big Wall Street company, and given a $113 million severance package and his successor who is a loyal friend of his is given an estimated $32 million to take his place. Hedge fund managers are now being reported to make $350 to $500 million each per year. Stein makes the case that the system is really out of whack when the men and women like the Navy Seals who make this good life possible are paid about $1900 per month with combat pay. Here is how he puts it:

Remember that it all depends on the fighting men and women, not on the people in finance. It depends on the guys whose names you will never know, guys who come home and work - not at jobs in which helicopters ferry them to secret-deal meetings in New York or London, but at jobs in places like a car wash in Burleson, Tex., where one of the men who captured Saddam Hussein is working without complaint and with barely mentioning that he was in Iraq.

Petite Party People

As a geezer, I know I know I am out of the main stream in most areas and don't even suspect a lot of what is going on today. This morning I was reminded again just how true this is. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal dealing primarily with the potential scandal of Wall Street brokers being feted excessively by interested individuals. No big surprise there. However, at a party in trendy South Beach in Miami there was a groom-to-be who was entertained on a yacht by at least one dwarf hired for the occasion. It seems there is a real business (see Shortdwarf.com) that rents dwarfs for parties at rates starting at $149 per hour. The owner of the business says some people are just into dwarf entertainment.

Islam Threatened

A statement that has warned against the dangers of allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia was released on the Internet on Friday. More than 100 sheikhs, imams, judges, Islamic scholars, Islamic university teachers, several heads of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice centers in the Kingdom, as well as some teachers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah signed the statement.

The statement said that the enemies of Islam are seeking to destroy the great role women have been given in Islam by corrupting them and hence corrupting the Islamic world.

Small World

Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar is the biochemist currently being held in Egypt for chats about his role in the London bombings. British media reported that police had found evidence of the explosive TATP in his bathtub. This is the same explosive which was to be used by the shoe bomber Richard Reid who was affiliated with the same mosque in London. el-Nashar was in Raleigh, N. C. for one semester studying at North Carolina State. The problem is he stayed here for a total of 13 months. We really need to find out what he did during that time an who he had contacts with.