3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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As the world knows by now, Terri Schiavo died this morning, thus freeing her from the clutches and manipulations of both her parents and her husband and the minions who claim to be supporting each. There’s certainly no joy here and enough sorrow to go around.
My biggest hope at this time is that lawmakers everywhere will recognize a Terri’s Law moratorium to give them time to reflect on whether the law they champion to Make Sure This Doesn’t Happen Again doesn’t do more harm than good. Trying to prevent the unpreventable tragedy is the surest way to cause unintended consequences. Here are a few things we would be well-served to keep in mind:
- Federalism is a Good Thing. States sometimes make mistakes on decisions within their purview, but it is not Congress’ role to prevent every injustice or correct every injustice once it occurs.
- Each of us has a fundamental right to privacy that includes the right to decline medical treatment, even if it means those we leave behind have to say goodbye sooner than they might wish.
- State laws that attempt to determine what an incapacitated person would or would not consent to are, in the main, a good idea. You may disagree with the decision of Judge Greer, or prefer that a dispassioned advocate for Terri to have been involved, but the procedure itself does more good than harm.
- Obedience to a "culture of life" may or may not be a good thing, depending on the circumstances. Ultimately, it is the patient, not those left behind, that should decide whether life-prolonging treatment should be used.
(more…)
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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I did a telephone interview with the Courier-Journal yesterday and met with a photographer today for a story on blogging the 2005 tournament. Look for something in tomorrow’s Courier, they tell me.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Louisville and Jefferson County are politically an island of blue in a sea of red, to apply the overused and cliched metaphor from the last election cycle. Over the past few days, it’s become clear that in another way, Jefferson County is an island of red in a sea of blue. Former Courier-Journal columnist Pat Forde, now appearing as a featured writeer on ESPN’s website, writes that the current happy days for UofL fans are stormy for the Big Blue Nation:
Monday morning dawned raw and rainy in Kentucky. Stepping outside, a nasty wind blew the drizzle sideways. You could see your breath.
All in all, as miserable a late-March day as you can have in the Bluegrass State.
That was metaphorically apt, at least in 119 of the state’s 120 counties, where allegiance is pledged to Big Blue. Only in the red island of Jefferson County, home of Louisville and its Final Four Cardinals, did this rainy day deserve the Gene Kelly treatment.
For the first time in 19 years, the Cards are Final Four-bound. For the first time in 11 years, Little Brother has advanced farther than Big Brother - and done it with the old coach of the Wildcats calling the tune.
This is the worst-case scenario come to life for Big Blue Nation, the very moment they knew in their guts would come when Rick Pitino was named the coach of the Louisville Cardinals four years ago. Someday - and probably sooner than later - the ‘Ville would return to the summit of college basketball.
Conditioned to life on top, Kentucky fans develop rather stiff necks when they have to look up to someone - especially when that someone resides in the same state.
Big Blue certainly has a more storied tradition than the Cards, and by most objective measures is one of the top two or three programs in all of basketball. They were winning championships long before the Cards 1980 and 1986 titles, and have won two since. From 1987-2004 (since Pervis Ellison led the Ville to its last title), Louisville was 369-221 (0.630), with zero Final Four appearances. UK was 421-117 (0.780) over the same period, with championships in 1996 and 1998. In fact, were it not for the fortuitous meeting arranged by the NCAA in on March 26, 1983 in Knoxville, you probably wouldn’t see the teams play head-to-head the way they do today.
The simple fact is that many UK fans don’t see UofL as a legitimate rival. Ask a member of Big Blue Nation who they most want to beat and the answer’s more likely to be Duke or UNC or another member of the SEC (although this undoubtedly changed when Pitino took over the program in 2001). Ask a UofL fan, and you’ll get Memphis and Cincinnati, but you’ll get UK as well. Louisville is full of Kentucky fans. I saw as much blue last Saturday (a day before UK lost to Michigan State) as I did red (the day UofL came back to beat West Virginia). Some UK fans still won’t cheer for little brother against Illinois, although even the most diehard Cat fan would have to root for Pitino’s New Bombino’s over hated UNC.
This is why I both hoped for and dreaded a UK victory on Sunday. What would the scene have been like if the Cards and Cats were on a collision course in St. Louis? It didn’t happen, of course, and so Big Blue Nation will be watching the Cards on Saturday face off against the nation’s top-ranked team. Hopefully, Louisvillians will resist the urge to gloat, as fortunes could very easily be reversed next year, as Tubby Smith gets much of his team back (less Chuck Hayes), and Pitino faces the certain loss of starters Francisco Garcia, Larry O’Bannon and Ellis Myles along with key reserve Otis George. He may lose starter Taquan Dean as well, especially if the Cards are left standing on Monday night.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Louisville is a town divided along sports lines. Go to any store selling NCAA-licensed products, and you’ll see just as much blue as red. Last weekend, in an ultimately fruitless search for a hoodless black Cardinals sweatshirt prior to the tipoff against West Virginia, my subjective impression was that there was more blue than red for sale. More on this dynamic later. For now, at least, it appears that the Cards’ Final Four appearance is beginning to heat up the locals.
Yesterday, 16,000 Louisville fans packed Fourth Street Live for a pep rally, a huge crowd considering that I didn’t hear a word about it until I tuned in to the ESPN Radio affiliate broadcasting live from Fourth Street to hear the chants on behalf of local boy made good Larry O’Bannon. Here’s the Courier-Journal’s take:
Surrounded by a sea of red, Maurice Sheckles didn’t mind fighting for a
spot yesterday among the roughly 16,000 people elbowing each other for
a look at the Final Four-bound University of Louisville Cardinals.
He only wished he could see more of the stage where they were standing.
"Let me sit on your shoulders, man," said Sheckles, 34.
That, in fact, was about the only way for thousands of people to see as
4th Street Live was engulfed in a wave of red-and-black fan frenzy
during a late-afternoon pep rally for Coach Rick Pitino and his men’s
basketball team….
"We had 10,000 wristbands, and we had given them out by 5 o’clock,"
said Kimber Goodwin, director of marketing for the entertainment
complex’s developer, the Cordish Co. She estimated that 16,000 to
17,000 people filled the blocklong expanse of stores, bars and
restaurants….
The mania spilled out past the 4th Street Live entrance, where
bumper-to-bumper traffic blared music and honked horns while hundreds
more people tried to muscle into the rally long after it began.
The spirit seems to be building. Some time yesterday, a local car wash changed its signage to implore "Go Cards Go," even though the car wash (at Hurstbourne and Westport, in the East End) is quite a ways from either Freedom Hall or Belknap Campus.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. Louisville is, after all, in the hunt for its third national title and first since Never Nervous Pervis Ellison swished free throw after free throw in 1986. It’s a basketball town in a basketball-crazed state, one where fans may begrudgingly forgive, but certainly don’t forget. But it’s not a college town, per se. It’s not Chapel Hill or East Lansing or even Champaign-Urbana. Residents here fly their black and red (or blue and white) flags from their cars and call talk radio shows and criticize Clear Channel for dumping their Cards deal for one in which UK gets priority. But the support for the local boys and the buzz being generated seems almost palpable. The radio guys broadcasting from Fourth Street got it right yesterday - it really seems like the week before Derby, just without the mint juleps and hats.
Final note: not everybody supports the Cards or Cats. I spotted this car flying a green and white flag that I presume to be support for the Spartans in the parking lot this morning. The plates are from Indiana. Hopefully the UK fans have calmed down a bit.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Washington > List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm”>List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm
The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.
“These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler’s legal battle to keep Terri’s estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri,” says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo’s father. “These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!”
Draw your own conclusions. I think all it shows was that hooking up with Randall Terry in an attempt to get public exposure for their point of view was a big mistake.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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The sports pundits are calling this the greatest Elite 8 round ever in the NCAA tournament. I don’t have the experience to argue with that, and certainly having all four games in play until the final seconds and three of the four go to overtime would be hard to top. Add in two of the overtime games only going to overtime after furious comebacks by the eventual victor (I’m still torn over which was more impressive, and am far from an impartial observer, but my vote still goes to Louisville because Arizona collapsed more than West Virginia did), and it would be hard to top. Certainly it tops the 1992 tourney, which included Duke’s memorable OT victory over UK and Michigan’s OT victory over Ohio State, but also a Cincinnati blowout of Memphis and Indiana blowout of UCLA.
The biggest loser of all is likely to be Tubby Smith. There’s a vocal and growing anti-Tubby contingent among UK fans, who like to point out that the only Final Four for Tubby was the 1998 title he won with Rick Pitino’s players. That Pitino returned to the Final Four before Tubby did will only make things worse for Tubby. The criticism really isn’t fair - UK played in three regional finals since 1998 (in 1999, 2003 and 2005), which is the same number Duke has played in, so they’ve certainly had some success. Plus, UK really overachieved this year with a team most thought was a year away. Tubby’s in an unenviable situation - his defense-driven style of play is just not as fun to watch as Pitino’s Bombinos.
As for the national semifinals, I suspect that they’re both too close to call, Louisville’s #4 and Michigan State’s #5 seeds notwithstanding. The Cards are simply not the same team that lost to Houston and got blown out by Memphis. They seem to have alargely recovered from the injury bug that plagued them earlier in the year, and the addition of the 2-3 zone has done wonders to make up for a thin bench and weakness to dribble penetration. On the other side of the bracket, UNC appears to be falling prey to the Roy Williams bug, and is playing just well enough to win (so far), and with Michigan State in its fourth Final Four in seven years, Tom Izzo needs to be ranked among the elite coaches. As I’ve noted before, I’ve been wrong every step of the way on these Cards: I thought they’d blow out Louisiana-Lafayette, and they won a squeaker. I thought they’d lose to georgia tech because I bought the ACC hype, and they won going away. I thought the UW game would be close, and it wasn’t, and thought the WVU game wouldn’t be close, and it was. So I have no idea. An Illini-Tarheel final would not surprise me, nor would a UofL-MSU final. Go Cards.
Final note: this year’s Final Four seeds total 11 (two #1s, a #4 and a #5). That’s the second-highest for the last ten years (2000 featured one #1, one #5 and two #8s - not surprisingly, the one seed (Michigan State) won). Indicative of either bad seeding or a lot of upsets.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Because everybody needs a marijuana-scented MP3 player.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Luckily, it appears that the earthquake off the cost of Indonesia (magnitude 8.7) did not spawn a massive tsunami the way the magnitude 9.0 quake on the same faultline did last year. According to CNN:
A damaging tsunami is still possible and should be "presumed," said Robert Cessaro of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The quake may have sent its energy further to the south than last year’s quake, which measured above 9 and ruptured to the north, he said.
"So all that pressure to the north would have been relieved" by that quake, said Cessaro. "We think this event probably ruptured to the south, with the beam of energy probably propagated to the south toward Mauritius and the Rodrigues."
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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The 2005 Hugo Awards shortlist was released over the weekend, and of the five nominated novels, I’ve read only one, China Mieville’s Iron Council. I was, as I’ve noted before, somewhat underwhelmed by Iron Council - I think The Scar was inferior to Perdido Street Station, and Iron Council was inferior to The Scar. Mieville’s a gifted writer, but I suspect that Iron Council wasn’t one of the best SF novels of the past year. Of course, I don’t really know, as the only titles from the SF section of the bookstore I’ve been reading are Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World), which aren’t really science fiction at all (I’m not sure what they are, other than fascinating). Obscure things to note:
- 2 of the 5 nominated novels have “Iron” in their title, including Iron Council and Charles Stross’ Iron Sunrise
- Perhaps not conincidentally, the nominated authors include Mieville, an outspoken socialist, and Stross, who Professor Bainbridge describes as “sort of a Trotskyite commie pinko neo-pagan or maybe something even worse.”
- I suppose I should succumb to peer pressure and read Old Man’s War, as every blogospheric discussion of the genre tells me I should.
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3 years, 5 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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It occurs to me that if the University of Louisville wins two more games and the University of Kentucky wins three more games, thus setting up an epic battle in St. Louis, Louisville may actually implode, leaving a 385 square mile pit not unlike the one at the end of the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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