What the FOX? (Terror funding edition)

So the second-largest investor in Fox News is also the major financial backer of the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

How much stupider can FOX get? Why does it take a cable comedy show uncover this kind of stuff?

For your viewing pleasure …

Really, really ugly shoes. Surprise! They’re on sale … for $716.

Surviving

I survived my first two days in clinicals! OK, sure they were just lab days but they were long (12 hours in a lab/classroom setting is killer!) and I had some wicked strep on the first day. I went the  first day with a 100 F fever when I was on tylanol (I took a short break to visit my PA who told me a bad case of strep).  Zombie walking through my fist 12-hour day actually made the second one a lot easier. It went by a lot faster and I was actually involved in classroom discussion, since I was in a fever fog the first day and was feeling like a Typhoid Mary. I shouldn’t have even been there, but there was no way for me to make up the hours. Overall we worked on communication techniques, basic vitals, lifting and transporting, and more practice on focused assessment. Next week: Shots, bathing and hospital orientation.

Posnanski on cheating in baseball

Joe Posnanski, the longtime Kansas City Star columnist who’s now also writing for Sports Illustrated, has a nice column on his blog about cheating in baseball and historical context. It was sparked by a review of the new Willie Mays biography. I haven’t read the book, or the review. But I agree with Joe’s basic assumption: baseball has always had its share of cheaters and cranks, and overly romanticizing the game — and especially the numbers of bygone eras — probably isn’t healthy.

My main reasons for taking this view is purely self-serving as a modern fan of the game: l like baseball. I like watching baseball today, right now. If I believe baseball was so much better back in the day, or so much worse or more sinister now than it was then, I’m much less likely to simply be able to enjoy watching baseball. To that end, I really like Joe’s last line:

But when it comes down to it, I guess my big issue with Pete Hamill’s romantic essay is there never really was a long-ago time in America when there was a beautiful game called baseball. The game, for better and worse, is as beautiful now as it ever was.

I’m not terribly bent out of shape about Mark McGwire’s return to the Cardinals bench. What he did was wrong, but he wasn’t the only one. He apologized, as he should have. We condemned him for the past, as we should have. All we, and baseball as a whole, can do now is try to clean things up the best we can and then move forward. Admitting mistakes is part of that process. But acting overly pious doesn’t help much, in my opinion. Big Mac seems like he’s ready to take charge and do right by the organization. I’m ready to see what he can bring to the team.

Time for Pong

This is really cool. Someday, when I have a man cave/game room, I want to put this clock in it.

It’s actually an open source kit available from Adafruit Industries. The computer is truly playing a game of pong, and the score changes every 60 seconds to track time. Not sure I’d want to bother with soldering it and all that, but I think it’d be worth buying a finished one. Adafruit has a short video showing how it works, the link is below.

MONOCHRON – open source retro clock from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Bears could close season strong

Yesterday we went to the Missouri State Bears’ next-to-last home game of the season — the “Bracketbuster” game sponsored by ESPN. The game was live on ESPN2 and the opponent was the Nevada Wolfpack. They’re a good team and really were in control for most of the game. Nevada was up by 10 with about 6:30 left but the Bears found a way to come back and win by two points thanks to a pair of ice-cold free-throws by Nafis Ricks with the game time at 60 with 3.4 seconds left.

It was one of the best games we’ve been to in the last few years. We left the building almost in disbelief that they won the game. Even though the Bears had a really hot 9-1 start to the season, their middling .500 record in Missouri Valley Conference play has ensured they won’t be picked as an at-large team for the NCAA tourney. Their only hope to go to the dance is winning the MVC tourney in St. Louis in a couple of weeks. As I said on the podcast with Allen Vaughan a few weeks ago, I think the Bears have what it takes to reach the title game of the tourney and put themselves in position to win it and get the automatic bid the big tournament. When they turn it on, they can finish, but they just haven’t done that enough this year.

I hope Saturday’s big win will propel them into the conference postseason. They have two more conference games left, one home and one away. They’re 18-10 overall, so they have a shot at a 20-win season. We’ll be in St. Louis the weekend of the MVC tournament and I hope to get tickets to Sunday’s title game. Here’s hoping the Bears will be on the court that day…

Mike’s on a podcast talking college hoops

I was recently on a podcast with my friend Allen, who is a founder/staffer at a new local Web site covering Springfield music, sports, culture, food and more. The site is called TAGSGF.com. (SGF is short-hand for Springfield, especially on Twitter, and TAG stands for “The Awesome Guide” so, it’s The Awesome Guide to Springfield.)

Allen used to be a sports reporter for the News-Leader, but left last year. The new site is one of the many things he’s doing now. He brought me onto the podcast to talk about Missouri State Bears basketball. I’m kind of representing the fan perspective on the show. I’ve been a serious Bears fan for many years, and following the team has been pretty interesting this year. They got off to a hot 9-0 start, and finished the non-conference schedule at 9-1 (the only loss was to Arkansas, an SEC team); but … since then they’ve been pretty middling in conference play.

The show is about 30 minutes long. Click here to go to the site and listen to it.

If  you don’t know what a podcast is, it’s basically like a radio program that you download via the Web rather than listen to over-the-air. The recording quality varies, because anybody with a little voice recorder and a computer can do it. I’ve listened to many podcasts the last few years, but this is the first time I’ve been on one. I think I did a pretty good job of acting like I know something about basketball!

(OK, I kinda know basketball, but certainly not as much as football or baseball.)

Super Bowl Thoughts: Three Hall of Famers & Out

I don’t really have a huge rooting interest in any NFL team — even the teams I’m actually a fan of, the Rams and Chiefs. I mostly just enjoy the NFL in general for what it is: an incredible, perfectly-made-for-TV entertainment product. So I didn’t really have a huge rooting interest in the Super Bowl.

Throughout the playoffs this year I found a reason to root for nearly every team at some point. It would been great to see Brett Favre take on his old team, or to see Peyton Manning take on Favre or Kurt Warner. It would have been great to see Warner and Favre meet up, or to see either one of them back in the Super Bowl. It would have been stellar to see the Cowboys lose on the big stage. And I really, really like Peyton Manning in general.

But it was just hard to deny that the Saints were going to win on Sunday – not after the way they demolished the Cards and Vikes. I predicted a 3-point win for the Saints but wasn’t surprised by the two-touchdown end result. The game, just like this whole NFL season and postseason, was really entertaining. The early decision by the Saints to go for it on 4th down and then getting stuffed. The on-side kick to start the second half, which actually worked. The over-and-back, replay-confirmed 2-point conversion. And the Manning interception. The Saints just looked so vicious on D in their first two playoff games that I couldn’t imagine them losing, let alone being cast as underdogs by the Vegas odds-makers. I guess that’s the power of Manning Industrial Hype Complex among the media and analysts.

This win will look better and better as years go by, and it has nothing to do with representing a city rocked by a hurricane. Think about this: the Saints defense went through Kurt Warner, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning — three future Hall of Famers — on their way to the top. And they didn’t just eek by them, they demolished them in three consecutive games. When we look back years from now after all three of those guys are enshrined in Canton, Ohio, this run is going to look even more incredible. Drew Brees might even make it to Canton, too.

What a season for football. But here’s the best thing of all: only 10 days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training in Jupiter, Florida. Hell yeah!

When they said intense …

So when they said the program was intense they weren’t really lying. Today I’ve turned in my first academic paper in nine years; am taking a test on coagulation modifiers, diuretics, benzos and barbs, antiepileptics and antiparkinson drugs; write a SOAP note for the heart, lungs and vascular periphery; and possibly study for a test on Thursday.  It’s a lot of work, but very interesting. I’m really enjoying my assessment class. A lot of it is learning how and what kind of questions to ask, so it reminds me a lot of some of my journalism classes. What I’m really enjoying is learning all the tests and ways to physically assess people. Last class we did heart and lungs and my ribs were a little sore from people poking on them, but it was still fun. Looking forward to ending all the homework and watching some old “Lost” episodes while I iron.

SOAP notes and the start of school

A week ago, I didn’t know what a soap note was. Now I’m writing one. It’s an interesting thing. We’re supposed to avoid using full sentences so my years writing headlines will come in handy. It’s nice to know that I do have some crossover skills. The weirdest thing was doing the assessment. It seemed like I was back at MSU learning the art of interviewing. We all had to do the assessment on other students, whom we had all just met. The next thing you know we have to go through a list of questions “Do you have enough income for food” and put our hands all over their eyes and look though their hair. I’m going to get to know these people really well, really quick! And I know that part of it is just becoming comfortable asking people questions that you wouldn’t normally ask them. I just hope that soap notes are something I actually use since I’m basically spending a semester learning how to assess people and write them up!