Unlikely Twins…
By Brian | August 25, 2009
Today is both Leonard Bernstein’s and Billy Ray Cyrus’ birthday. Fans of both will celebrate, although they’ve likely never met each other…
Categories: Unlikely Twins | 1 Comment »
Michael Vick Dog Jersey – $39.99 on nflshop.com
By Brian | August 22, 2009
There really isn’t too much more to say, is there…
Hat tip: Anthony Campisi
Categories: Sports Talk | 3 Comments »
AIG CEO: The Pity Party’s Over, Now Get Back to Work!
By Brian | August 21, 2009
Robert Benmosche, AIG’s new CEO had an internal meeting with his employees on August 4th. This being the Internet age and all, it took all of two weeks for a transcript to make itself available for public consumption. Check out some of these quotes:
- I don
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Kids These Days…
By Brian | August 20, 2009
Well, it’s “Back to School” time again, which means it’s time for Beloit College to publish it’s annual mindset list, reflecting the perspective of the incoming freshman class (the Class of 2013).
For some reason, this year’s list wasn’t as amazing to me as it has been in past years, but there were a few items that I found worthy of note:
Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991. For these students…
6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
7. Earvin “Magic” Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
23. The European Union has always existed.
34. They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
35. Women have always outnumbered men in college.
44. There have always been flat screen televisions.
50. Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
51. Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.
53. Someone has always been asking:Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 2 Comments »
Gotta Hand It to the Oakland Fans…
By Brian | August 20, 2009
I’m a life-long Yankee fan, but when I see pure genius in another team’s fans, I’m a big enough person to give them their due. This awesome scene was caught on the YES network during a Yankees-A’s game in Oakland:
Well done, little girl…
Categories: Sports Talk | 4 Comments »
Random Acts of Blogging – 8/18/09
By Brian | August 18, 2009
A few quick items I found interesting or humorous:
First it was an epidemic, then it was a global pandemic, and now the Swine Flu is a video game! The game is free, and can be found at http://www.thegreatflu.com. Heck, if the latest Harry Potter movie can be a video game, why not swine flu, right?
Next, there’s this post from BoingBoing, which explains that you can get G-mail to stop putting advertisements on your e-mails, simply by putting words or phrases like “9/11” and “suicide” in the mails. You see, G-mail doesn’t want to appear insensitive by putting ads on e-mails about such serious topics, so if you fool it into thinking that your e-mail refers to such subjects, then you can be ad free. Here’s my favorite line from the article:
Questions remain [such as] How do you avoid scaring the people who receive your emails with your seemingly pointless references to incest and gang rape?
Classic.
Moving on, we have Elsie Poncher. Elsie’s late husband, Richard, bought two tombs in a Los Angeles mausoleum (for him and his wife) from Joe DiMaggio in 1954. When Mr. Poncher passed away in 1986, he was laid to rest in one of them, which wound up being directly above DiMaggio’s ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe. Fast forward to today, where Elsie wants to pay off the $1.6 million mortgage on her Beverly Hills home.
So, she’s put her husband’s grave on eBay. Her plan, you see, is to move him to her spot, and have herself cremated. Sound crazy? Well, the starting bid was $500,000, and as of yesterday, the bidding had reached $2.5 million. It seems Ms. Poncher will pay off the mortgage and have some money to spare. My favorite part? The text of her ad:
“Here is a once in a lifetime and into eternity opportunity to spend your eternal days directly above Marilyn Monroe. In fact the person occupying the address right now is looking face down on her.”
Does that make this a “tomb with a view?” (Ba dum! I’m here all week! Don’t forget to tip your waitresses…)
UPDATE: Final bid: $4.6 million.
UPDATE #2: Sanity returns to the world. Unidentified $4.6 million bidder pulls out. A second auction, with reserve price starting at $500,000 closed with zero bids.
And finally, there is the somewhat sad news that the venerable magazine, Reader’s Digest has declared bankruptcy. There are details available in the link, but for some reason, I feel the need to tell you about this in a short, summarized paragraph.
That’s all for now folks. Hope you enjoyed the show. Have a great day…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 5 Comments »
Go Penn, Beat Harvard!
By Brian | August 13, 2009
If you’re an Ivy League football or basketball fan, you’re used to the occasional news story about Penn beating up on schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. But here’s one area where you don’t often see Penn atop the standings:
The University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League school founded by Benjamin Franklin, beat Harvard University
Categories: Money Talk, University of Pennsylvania | 1 Comment »
A Quick Shot of Healthcare, Part 3 – The Deep End of the Pool
By Brian | August 12, 2009
I
Categories: Political Rantings | 4 Comments »
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down…
By Brian | August 10, 2009
Ladies & gentlemen, let it be known that there is officially one more trumpeter in the world tonight! Also, may I remind everyone, that the music room in our house is soundproof.
Avery’s goal: to play The Red and the Blue with the Penn Band at Homecoming (November 7 against Princeton). Lessons have begun!
(NOTE: Click on the picture (or click here) to see a brief slideshow of pictures)
Categories: Family Matters, Words about Music | 1 Comment »
A Quick Shot of Healthcare, Part 2 – When Morals Meet Medicine
By Brian | August 10, 2009
I’ve been watching the current healthcare debate with great interest, and have a lot of opinions on various aspects of the matter, but can’t seem to consolidate them all into a single blog post. Instead, I’m queuing up a list of “quick shots” – thoughts on particular aspects of the debate – which I hope will spur some discussion
Remember, back in the early 1980’s, when the HIV/AIDS epidemic burst upon the scene? Without full information about what caused the disease or how it was transmitted, there was quite a bit of misinformation floating around. Specifically, I remember a burst of homophobia spewing forth – terms like “the gay plague,” claims that AIDS was God’s revenge on homosexuals, and so forth.
The whole thing kicked off a more fundamental debate. On one side was the radical, religious right who used the medical crisis to demonize the homosexual community. On the other side was the homosexual community and a host of more liberal social groups who’s message was basically “what two people do together in the privacy of their own home is none of your business.” And while this debate isn’t completely resolved (there will always be bigots in the world), I think that we’ve made tremendous progress in our society in accepting not only homosexuals, but a wide variety of groups who share some characteristic that makes them different from the majority.
Now, imagine the early 1980’s with a federal program of significant size providing healthcare to tens of millions of Americans (single payer or otherwise – doesn’t matter for our purposes here). Suddenly, the “what two people do together in the privacy of their own home is none of your business” argument has a massive hole in it. With one group (homosexuals in this case) consuming a disproportionate amount of health care expense, the live-and-let-live crowd would certainly lose some percentage of its members. After all, if your private activities are costing me some of my hard-earned tax dollars, then it very well might be my business after all. It makes me wonder, had the debate taken that tack, whether we would have made the kind of progress we’ve made today with regard to tolerance and equal rights.
Anyone who thinks I’m being an alarmist about this need only look at the current rumblings about obesity floating around the Internet (and, to some extent, Congress) these days. For now, we’re kicking around taxes on cheeseburgers. Are federal laws denying healthcare to those who’s BMI is over a certain threshold that far behind? How tenuous does the link between an activity and healthcare costs have to be before the government is allowed to legislate against it? Skydiving? Motorcycle riding? Hunting? Belonging to a college fraternity or sorority? Each of these activities presents known risks, and potentially raises the average cost of healthcare above the costs for those who don’t participate. Does that give us, the taxpayers, a vested interest in regulating them? And, more to the point, what of those people who will claim a vested interest, even when none truly exists?
It seems clear that some degree of additional government involvement in healthcare is inevitable at this point, and perhaps even warranted. However, I don’t think the implications of this involvement have been fully considered…
Categories: Political Rantings | 2 Comments »
