Stuff

My post titles are crappy lately. Not that they were ever awesome, but "Stuff" barely even registers as an attempt. Anyway...

• Read this article that was linked by my good buddy Jay Nordlinger at NRO. It is about global warming, or the lack thereof, and had this quote:

  In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

  I was reading in Judges in the Old Testament the other day about their worship of Baalim and going after the nature gods. Environmentalism, to me, is the modern equivalent. I don't think that's a stretch. The article is great, as always, so hopefully at least one person reads it.

• And today I also read this article about how to best to blow through all your money if you're a professional athlete. I don't think I ever fully appreciate how amazing it is that these athletes can so quickly accelerate into financial ruin. Here are some examples from it:

  Screw up, deny it, then fight by using every lawyer and dime you have. Roger Clemens just sold his Bentley, reportedly to pay legal bills. Marion Jones lawyered herself broke before she finally copped and went to prison. Paging Mr. Bonds, Mr. Barry Bonds.
  
  Buy a house the size of Delaware. Evander Holyfield was in danger of losing his 54,000-square-foot pad outside Atlanta, and it's a shame. He had almost visited all 109 rooms!
  
  Buy many, many cars. Baseball slugger Jack Clark had 18 cars and owed money on 17 when he went broke. And don't get just boring Porsches and Mercedes. Go for Maybachs. They sell for as much as $375,000—even though they look like Chrysler 300s—and nobody will ever know how to pronounce them, much less fix them.
  
  Buy a jet. They burn money like the Pentagon. Do you realize it costs $50,000 just to fix the windshield on one? Scottie Pippen borrowed $4.375 million to buy some wings and spent God knows how much more for insurance, pilots and fuel. Finally, his wallet cried uncle. The courts say he still owes $5 million, including interest. See you in coach, Scottie! (For that matter, why not a yacht? Latrell Sprewell kept his 70-foot Italian-made yacht tied up in storage until the bank repossessed it, in August 2007. He probably sat at home and cried about that—until the bank foreclosed on his house, this past May.)

• And you all heard about the Fresno State Bulldogs winning the College World Series last week right? I was going to write more at length about this one, but I can't really find anything decent on it. No good articles, and nothing from youtube that's really worth watching. They are the lowest seeded team to ever win a national championship in any sport, men's or women's. The equivalent is if a 13th seeded team won the NCAA Men's Basketball tourney. So for example...the only 13th seeded team this last season to even win one game was USD, which beat 4th seeded Conneticut. They promptly lost the next round to another team that upset their first round opponent. But for Fresno State to win, it would have been something like if USD beat Conneticut (4), Western Kentucky (12, beat a 5), UCLA (1), Kansas State (1), and then Memphis (1) to win the national championship. Sounds absurd when you put it in those terms, right? But that's what happened last week. It's nothing short of amazing.

• One more thing about athletes and financial ruin...the Roger Clemens example. Do you realize he is only one year removed from making $28 million last season. And this guy is having to sell his personal items because he doesn't have enough liquidity to cover his legal battles. It's crazy.

• This is the last item. This is the craziest of them all. Women are outraged that they don't have the right to murder. In their eyes it might be killing, but consider the absurd morality of these excerpts (the article can be found here, from the AP):

  In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.
  
  His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida...
  
  "A lot of the girls I speak to ... want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women's leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don't have a special militant wing for women ... but that doesn't mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."

  This is the world we live in ladies and gentlemen. Black is white, up is down, evil is good...cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria...please don't vote for Obama...see ya'll later.