C-USA championship game. Go Pirates!

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Thursdays are special

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Sweater vest change

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This is why I voted for Barack Obama

From the NY Times:

Addressing critics who have likened Afghanistan to Vietnam, Mr. Obama called the comparison “a false reading of history.” And he spoke directly to the American people about the tough road ahead.

“Let me be clear: none of this will be easy,” Mr. Obama said. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will be an enduring test of our free society, and our leadership in the world. And unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the 20th century, our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.”

In language that often echoed themes struck by his predecessor, George W. Bush, Mr. Obama cited the longstanding moral burden carried by the United States in global affairs, and he celebrated America as a nation “founded in resistance to oppression.”

Had President John McCain made this speech, half the country would have ignored it as the ramblings of a war-mongering neo-con.

As I said before the election:

But, pacifist Democrats would have to accept that the President of the United States must sometimes act in unilateral ways to achieve national security goals. Seven years after 9/11, I think it's time a Democrat holds the responsibility for the protection of the United States. It will change the tenor of the debate dramatically.

He did.

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Finding the dead

Here's a great read about being an EMT. It's a good reminder that many people hold jobs the rest of us could never imagine:

Usually we find them in houses. Always upstairs, always in a tiny room. The sick and dying tend to know something is wrong and, if they can, they make their way to the bathroom. I’ve seen countless bodies, stiff and swelling, pinned between the toilet and the tub. Even when they’re in the bedroom or the kitchen the bathroom light is on, the medicine cabinet open and pawed through. By the time we’re called no one has spoken with him in days and a son or daughter has come to check on him. Usually they get no closer than the front door when their worst fears are confirmed. Once a woman rotted in her stifling hot apartment for two weeks before someone finally called. As we walked around, faces covered with towels, her neighbors were so ashamed they wouldn’t meet our eyes. ‘I just thought it was a rat in the wall,’ one woman told me. The smell was drifting out into the street and I asked her how big a rat did she think it was. She shook her head, embarrassed, then went back inside and locked her door.

Read the rest.

Kevin's a former newspaper alum and a great writer. Can't wait to read his published work.

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Terrible unnamed sourcing

Terrible unnamed sourced reporting:

Memphis will have a new coach in LSU assistant Larry Porter, a source with direct knowledge of the search said Saturday.

Porter, in his fifth year as running backs coach at LSU, is also assistant head coach and chief recruiter on Les Miles' staff in Baton Rouge

An entire news article written based on one unidentified person without any verification. This should never have made it onto ESPN's Web site, much less a televised report.

When I'm finished with my PhD, here's a study I'll conduct: I'll examine a sample of sports articles attributed to anonymous sources, then check to see how many turned out to be accurate. Wonder what they percentage will be. Below 50 percent perhaps? Particularly around the trade deadlines...

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It's vs. Its

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Never knew how brussel sprouts grew

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Global Warming rigged?

Here's a good take on the global warming email scandal that broke last week. It's written by George Monbiot, a well-known environmental advocate, so it's fair to say this isn't ideological posturing:

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

But do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is "the final nail in the coffin" of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed. Luckily for the sceptics, and to my intense disappointment, I have now been passed the damning email that confirms that the entire science of global warming is indeed a scam. Had I known that it was this easy to rig the evidence, I wouldn't have wasted years of my life promoting a bogus discipline. In the interests of open discourse, I feel obliged to reproduce it here.

Good points. The emails are certainly a blow for those who worship at the altar of science.

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