Josh Tinley.com

Halloween 2011 Links

2011-10-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

Here is the Tinleys' 2011 Halloween album on Facebook.

Here is Malachi's Halloween 2011 post.

Here is Resha Kate's Halloween 2011 post.

Here is Meyer's Halloween 2011 post.

Here's Meyer Hula Hooping

2011-08-08T04:49:00.001-07:00

Hello, Internet. It's been a while:

Introducing the Away From the Action Podcast

2011-06-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

I'm expanding my role as the writer of the Away From the Action column at Midwest Sports Fans to include an Away From the Action podcast. You can subscribe here or on iTunes. I've done two episodes so far. You can download them below:

Episode 1—Amanda Lawson: I talk to Amanda Lawson of Aerys Sports and Midwest Sports Fans about the Twins, Harmon Killebrew, the NFL lockout, and more.

Episode 2—Matt Baxendell: I talk to former Ohio State hockey player Matt Baxendell of 790 The Zone in Atlanta, National Football Authority, and Bucknuts.com about the situation in Columbus, the Thrashers' move to Winnipeg, and Beavis and Butt-Head's return.

Stuff I've Been Doing and Stuff

2011-06-07T03:46:00.000-07:00

Blogging about blogging is the lowest form of Internet literature, aside from the comments left in response to any article published by a daily newspaper or national news outlet. So I won't waste your time and mine telling you not to expect new content here at Scrambies until I'm able to replace the laptop that just died andor all of my kids have graduated from high school.

But I'm doing stuff, even if I'm not doing it here. And I should probably let you know about this stuff. So here you go:

My column at Midwest Sports Fans is now called Away From the Action. You can find all of my Away From the Action columns here. My latest: a case for Jimmy Connors as the greatest tennis player ever, a look at retired numbers in the NBA, and thoughts on what Winnipeg should call its new NHL team.

Speaking of my Midwest Sports Fans column, a baby name website called Nameberry asked me to write a version of my column on athletes whose names have become popular baby names.

A few years ago I wrote and recorded a song called "Redemption." (Click that link if you want to buy the mp3.) "Redemption" is now part of a new hymnal/song book called Worship and Song. You can get a free sampler at the Worship and Song website or order one of several Worship and Song editions.

I'm getting ready to swim in the now annual swim-a-thon to benefit the Mt. Juliet Help Center. Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like to sponsor me. You can pledge by minute, by lap, by kilometer, whatever.

Finally, if your dad is a Christian and a sports fan, and if you still haven't bought him a Fathers' Day present, get him a copy of my book, Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports. You can find it at Cokesbury, Amazon, and just about any other online bookstore.

Tuesday Night Trivia

2011-05-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

I meant to have this up last night, but I got distracted:

Of the four African nations whose names begin with the letter E, this one is the youngest. In fact, it celebrated 18 years of independence yesterday.

Bonus points if you can name all four countries.

If You're Interested

2011-05-13T17:21:00.001-07:00

I know that I haven't been writing much on this blog lately, but I have been writing. I've also been doing a poor job of using this blog to draw attention to what I'm writing elsewhere. So I'll do that now.

I've been writing for Midwest Sports Fans. Yes, I realize that Nashville isn't in the midwest (although the Predators play in a division with teams from Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and Columbus). But I lived much of my life in Indiana and maintain allegiances to several teams there. Here are some of my recent MSF articles. The article descriptions are what you see when you share the article on Facebook.

"How Many Parents Name Their Children After Sports Stars?": After checking the popularity of hils children's names, Josh Tinley decided to analyze data from the SSA to look into the names of popular athletes in an effort to see how many people were naming their children after popular sports stars.

"A Plea for Geographically Appropriate Pro Sports Nicknames": The 2nd round matchup between the recently relocated Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder is the perfect time for Josh Tinley's simple request: can we name our professional sports teams after things that actually represent the team's city?

"Which Active Players Are Locks for the Basketball Hall of Fame?": Now that the Playoffs are underway and everyone's paying attention to the NBA, Josh Tinley is posing this question: Which active players, if their career were to end tomorrow, would be deserving of election to the Basketball Hall of Fame?

I've also been doing some writing for Ministry Matters, a new web portal for church leaders. My latest Ministry Matters article, "Checking Our Facts," looks at some common misconceptions and misattributed quotations that I frequently encounter in my work with the church.

Happy reading.

Words and Punctuation Marks Your Writing Doesn't Need

2011-04-29T04:46:00.000-07:00

After eight years as an editor, I feel that I'm in a position to offer writers some pointers. Specifically, I think I'm qualified to warn writers about words and punctuation marks that they should avoid or make sure they're using correctly. So I've compiled a short list of words and punctuation that writers should avoid or use sparingly.

Before I continue, I want to be clear that I'm not writing this in response to any particular manuscript I've edited. I also don't want to give anyone the impression that I think I'm above doing things that writers shouldn't do. I confess that I overuse parentheses and semi-colons; I use the word own even when it is not necessary; and I refuse to use they as a singular pronoun, even when stylebooks allow it and not using it as such results in an awkward sentence. (Everyone has his or her own quirks and foibles.)

Anyway, here's my list:

Utilize: Save some pixels and syllables by writing use. It's cleaner and more concise and has the exact same meaning.

Problematic, efficacious, pragmatic, and other college-paper words: These words are great when you're trying to convince a professor that you know what you're talking about (even if you didn't read the book), but they have no use in the real world. Efficacious is just a fancy way to say effective; pragmatic is just a fancy way to say practical; praxis is just a fancy way to say practice. And, if you have to tell me that something is problematic, you probably haven't done a very good job explaining how and why it poses a problem. When you're packing up your college dorm room or apartment, leave these words behind for the next class of incoming freshman.

Impactful: Unless you're talking about meteorites striking the earth, you should consider eschewing all forms of the word impact. The verb form of impact, meaning "to have an impact on," has found its way into dictionaries and usage manuals in recent years, but its use nauseates wordies and grammarians. (The verb form of impact, meaning "to collide into," has always been OK.) Impactful, which is fighting its way into the English lexicon even though most dictionaries don't include it, is particularly gross. Before you use impactful, think about what you're really trying to say. Influential? Effective? Transcendent? Impressive?

Multi-syllable conjunctive adverbs: In most cases, you can replace one of these with a simple, single-syllable conjunction or adverb. For instance, instead of however use but; instead of therefore use so; instead of henceforth use then. Unless you're trying to impress a college professor or potential employer, use conjunctive adverbs such as moreover and furthermore sparingly. Also pay attention to how frequently you use contrary adverbs and conjunctions such as but, though, yet, and nonetheless. Each time you use one of these words, you send the reader in a different direction. If you find yourself making lots of these twists and turns, you should look for a more direct route.

Quotation marks: If you use "quotation marks" for any "purpose" other than marking "quotations" or "titles of articles," your readers will think you're being a jerk. Sometimes that's what you're going for. Just be aware.

Em dashes: Em dashes are like horseradish. Small doses are a great way to add flavor, but large quantities will burn your eyes out. Before you hit shift-option-hyphen—or for Windows users, before you select "Start" then "Programs" then "Accessories" then "System Tools" then "Character Map," scroll down four pages, select the em dash, copy the em dash, and paste the em dash into whatever you're working on—ask yourself, "Could I use a comma instead?" (To answer the question you're no doubt asking, I needed to use em dashes in the previous sentence because the instructions for creating an em dash on Windows are so lengthy and complex that commas would not suffice.)

Ellipses: The ellipsis has a very specific purpose: indicating that words have been omitted. Do not use it for any other purpose.

What Do You Think This Means?

2011-04-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

Meyer likes to write. He spends much of his free time typing. A lot of his work is short fiction. He also likes to create quizzes related to whatever he's learning at school. But the other day I found this:

What do you think?

Mally: "Costa Rica'

2011-04-05T04:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a video Ashlee shot of Malachi when I had taken Resha Kate to choir practice and Meyer was in Costa Rica with his grandparents:

Final Four Picks

2011-04-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here

Since less than two hours remain until tonight's games, I should probably make my re-picks for the Final Four. They'll both be re-picks because I went 0-4 in the Elite Eight and have been stuck on 570 points for over a week.

I hope with all my heart that Butler will win this tournament, and I know that they're more than capable of doing so. But, after seeing what VCU did to Kansas, following blow-out wins over Georgetown and Purdue, my brain (which hasn't been very reliable lately) tells me to go with the Rams.

In the other game, I've decided that I can no longer pick against Kemba Walker. I say UConn beats Kentucky in a close one. (I also suspect that there's a better-than-50-percent chance that whoever wins this game will end up vacating it following an NCAA investigation. Sorry. Maybe I'm too cynical.)

Go Bulldogs!

Re: Paying College Athletes

2011-03-29T21:15:00.001-07:00

PBS Frontline did an excellent piece this week called "Money and March Madness":

In Money and March Madness, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman takes a hard look at the economics of the annual NCAA tournament -- a cash cow for amateur athletics that generates enormous dollars for everyone except the players themselves, raising basic questions of fairness that are now leading a handful of influential figures to challenge the way the NCAA operate.

You can watch it for free here, and I recommend that you do. It does a great job addressing some often overlooked aspects of the college sports business: one-year scholarships, low graduation rates, the NCAA and member institutions profiting off of player likenesses long after those players have left the school.

My only complaint with this Frontline program is that it equates "college sports" with major Division I men's basketball and football. College athletic programs that generate big bucks are the exception, not the norm. Even many Division I football and men's basketball programs aren't profitable. This fact doesn't change any of the problems mentioned above, but it is something that must be acknowledged whenever one discusses the possibility of paying student-athletes.

Last week I wrote an article on this topic for Midwest Sports Fans. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

Sunday Elite Eight Picks

2011-03-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here

I missed twice yesterday. In the case of Butler, I'm glad I did. Here are my picks for Sunday (and here are Kevin's):

Southwest
1 Kansas over 11 VCU (re-pick)
Since all of my Final Four picks have lost, both of my picks today are re-picks. I would love nothing more than to see VCU win this game. And, if the Rams play like they did against Purdue, they could. But no team in this tournament is playing as well as Kansas, and no team in this tournament is as deep as Kansas. So I'll go with the Jayhawks.

West
2 North Carolina over 4 Kentucky (re-pick)
Both teams are playing well right now; both teams have a lot of talent. I give a slight edge to the Tar Heels and their front line.

Saturday Elite Eight Picks

2011-03-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here

I went actually went 3 for 4 yesterday. Not bad. I'm up to 570 points when accounting for re-pick points. Here are my picks for Saturday's games (and here are Kevin's):

Southeast
2 Florida over 8 Butler
I would love to see Butler win this one, and I think they have a good shot. But Florida is my one Final Four pick that is still alive, so I'll stick with the Gators.

West
5 Arizona over 3 Connecticut (re-pick)
Since UConn beat San Diego State, I have to re-pick. At this point, it would be unwise to pick against Kemba Walker. But it would be more unwise to pick against Derrick Williams. And I have more faith in Williams's supporting cast than I do Walker's. I think Arizona wins this one.

My Sister Was on Television

2011-03-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

Fox 5 in Atlanta spent the morning at Shiloh Middle School, where my sister Whitney teaches.

Here, Whitney conducts the orchestra and talks about the school's orchestra program:

In this segment, Fox 5's Buck Langford talks to Whitney about the recycling club:

High 5 Field Trip: Shiloh Middle School: MyFoxATLANTA.com

Friday Sweet 16 Picks

2011-03-25T04:15:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here

I went 2 for 4 yesterday, but one of those 2 was a re-pick. Somehow I'm still in the top half of ESPN's Tournament Challenge. I'm guessing I won't be after tonight.

Anyway, here are my picks for Thursday's Sweet 16 games:

East:
1 Ohio State over 4 Kentucky
Ohio State looks like the best team in this tournament. Kentucky has played well, but I don't think they can beat the Buckeyes.

2 North Carolina over 11 Marquette
I'd love to see Buzz Williams and Marquette win this, and I think they'll keep it close. But I'm going to stick with my original pick here.

Southwest:
1 Kansas over 12 Richmond
Again, I'd love to see the Spiders prevail (especially since they're responsible for knocking out Vanderbilt, and there's more honor in losing to a team that advances to the Elite Eight). But it's hard to see anyone other than Ohio State beating Kansas at this point.

11 VCU over 10 Florida State (re-pick)
Both of these teams have been impressive, and I hate to pick one over the other. But I'm going to say that VCU has been slightly more impressive and pick the Rams to move on. (I originally had Notre Dame in this one. Contest rules allow me to pick a replacement team for half the points.)

Thursday Sweet 16 Picks

2011-03-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here

Despite losing some key games on Sunday, I'm pleased to have a bracket that is slightly above average among the millions submitted to ESPN's Tournament Challenge. And I came out of the weekend with a 30-point lead over Kevin in our two-man contest. I'm up 410-380, but my pick for national champion (and I'm too embarrassed to write who that was) has already been eliminated.

Anyway, here are my picks for Thursday's Sweet 16 games:

West:
5 Arizona over 1 Duke (re-pick)
I'd originally picked Texas in this spot, but the Longhorns lost a close one to Arizona. So I'll just swap Texas for Arizona, mostly because I've been so impressed with Derrick Williams so far. (Contest rules allow me to pick a replacement team for half the points.)

2 San Diego State over 3 Connecticut
I really thought UConn would hit a wall after playing five games in five days in the Big East Tournament, but Kemba Walker has been playing out of his mind and the Huskies look as good as anyone. I'll stick with San Diego State, who could give UConn some problems in the paint, but I'm not too confident.

Southeast:
4 Wisconsin over 8 Butler
My heart says Butler (the school where my mother earned her Master's degree), but my brain says Wisconsin. The Badgers' early exit in the Big Ten Tournament made people forget just how good they are. (Scoring 33 points in a 40-minute game will do that.)

2 Florida over 3 BYU
I don't want to underestimate The Jimmer, but Florida is sneaky good. I had to watch the Gators thrice beat Vanderbilt and have decided that they have more talent than BYU can handle.

Lake County Is First Boys Team With a Female Coach to Win a State Title

2011-03-22T06:30:00.001-07:00

First, congratulations to the Lake County Falcons, who this weekend won the Tennessee Class A Boys Basketball State Championship. The Falcons' victory was particularly notable because their coach, Dawn Barger, became the first woman to coach a boys basketball team to a state title.

I hesitate to make a big deal about Barger's groundbreaking victory. As a high school swimmer, my boys team had a female coach, Jan Hendricks. (She wore a Viking helmet during big meets. It was awesome.) To my knowledge, no one on the team ever thought that having a woman as a coach was an issue or was even particularly novel. When you're swimmming 10 100s on 1:15 at 5:30 in the morning before school, the sex of the coach is immaterial. Apparently, Lake County's basketball players feel the same way:

"I feel it doesn't matter whether you're male or female because a coach is a coach and she pushes us as hard as any man could," said Lake County's B.J Gauldin, a 6-foot-7 post player who had 12 points, nine rebounds and five blocked shots. "She showed us how to run better, getting up and down the court and helped us with our shots. She worked with us just like any other person would."

Some women simply have a gift for teaching and coaching boys, just as some men have a gift for teaching and coaching girls. I hope that more women will get opportunities to use that gift.

Photo by Josh Anderson, Associated Press

Sunday Picks

2011-03-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here | Kevin's Third Round Picks

There comes a point each March when I concede defeat in any bracket contests I may be involved in, stop worrying about my picks, and allow myself to relax and appreciate the great stories and teams that make the NCAA Tournament so great. I've almost reached that point this year.

One quick note before getting to my picks for Sunday's games: Friday on this blog I picked VCU to beat Georgetown. Today I noticed that, on my official bracket, I picked Georgetown over VCU. VCU beat Georgetown (handily) last night, so I won't be getting those ten points.

East:
2 North Carolina over 7 Washington
Washington has been winning a lot of close games lately, but I think the Huskies' run stops here. Should be a good game.

1 Ohio State over 8 George Mason
I'd love to see the Patriots win this one, but Ohio State is the best team in this tournament.

11 Marquette over 3 Syracuse (re-pick)
I originally had Xavier winning this game. Since the Musketeers are gone, I'm going to take a chance on Marquette. (Contest rules allow me to pick a replacement team for half the points.) Strange things happen when conference foes meet in the Dance.

West:
1 Duke over 8 Michigan
Kyrie Irving was impressive Friday, albeit against Hampton. If Irving looks that good against the Wolverines, I'll regret not picking Duke to go to the Final Four.

4 Texas over 5 Arizona
Both teams struggled with inferior opponents in their opening games. I give Texas the edge here because the Horns have more overall talent. The Wildcats, however, will have the best player on the floor in Derrick Williams.

Southwest:
3 Purdue over 11 VCU
JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore won't allow Purdue to lose this game.

1 Kansas over 9 Illinois
Illinois looked great Friday against UNLV. They'll need to be perfect to beat Kansas.

2 Notre Dame over 10 Florida State
We had a Chris Singleton sighting Friday. I'm sticking with the Irish, but this one could get interesting.

Saturday's Picks

2011-03-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here.

I started strong, going 13-3 on Thursday, but I went 10-6 yesterday and now trail Kevin 240-220 in our contest (he explains the difference between ESPN's scoring and our scoring). Thus far, I would have been better off picking the top seeds to win every game. The good news for today is that all of my original picks to win today's games are still alive. (That won't be the case tomorrow.) Here are my picks for today:

East:
4 Kentucky over 5 West Virginia
I'm starting to doubt this one, but Kentucky played well down the stretch and I think they'll rebound from a let down against Princeton. West Virginia has a really strong team and tends to overachieve in March, so I could be in trouble.

West:
2 San Diego State over 7 Temple
The Aztecs got their first ever NCAA Tournament win on Thursday. They'll get their second today.

3 Connecticut over 6 Cincinnati
UConn showed no signs of fatigue in its route of Bucknell. If this game is in doubt late, I expect Kemba to take over and give the Huskies the win.

Southwest:
13 Morehead State over 12 Richmond
I originally had Morehead beating Vanderbilt in this game, such was my lack of faith in my Commodores (whom I felt obliged to pick in their first game against Richmond). Richmond is the better team, but Morehead proved Thursday that they're more than just Kenneth Faried, and I think they'll win this one to advance to the Sweet 16.

Southeast:
2 Florida over 7 UCLA
I still like Florida to go far this year, and UCLA (whom I didn't pick to be here) has a history of losing to the Gators in March.

1 Pittsburgh over 8 Butler
I'd love to see Butler win this one, and the Bulldogs are capable of doing so, but I don't think they will.

11 Gonzaga over 3 BYU
I think this is where the absence of Brandon Davies catches up with the Cougars.

4 Wisconsin over 5 Kansas State
Wisconsin was impressive in its win over Belmont. I'm sticking with the Badgers.

Kneeling in the End Zone Presents God's Bracket 2011, Womens' Edition

2011-03-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

And here's a rundown of the teams from religiously affiliated schools in this year's NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament.

Roman Catholic

Notre Dame (#2, Dayton)

St. John's (#9, Spokane)

Jesuit

Xavier (#2, Spokane)

Georgetown (#5, Philadephia)

Gonzaga (#11, Spokane)

Vincentian

DePaul (#3, Philadelphia)

Marianist

Dayton (#11, Philadelphia)

Franciscan

St. Francis (PA) (#13, Philadelphia)

Baptist

Baylor (#1, Dallas)

Samford (#14, Dallas)

Gardner-Webb (#14, Dayton)

United Methodist

Duke (#2, Philadelphia)

Presbyterian

Princeton (#12, Philadelphia)

Note: While not listed, Vanderbilt (#10, Spokane) has historical ties to The United Methodist Church; Marist (#10, Philadelphia) has historical ties to the Roman Catholic Church; and the Stetson (#16, Dayton) until recently had ties to the Florida Baptist Convention.

See Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports for an appendix with a complete list of religiously affiliated Division I schools.

Friday Picks

2011-03-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here.

Here are Kevin's picks for the ~~first~~ second round games, and here are my picks for Friday's games.

East:
8 George Mason over 9 Villanova
Nova has talent, but they played so poorly in the final month of the season that I'm not convinced they belong in this tournament. Mason won an even-stronger-than-usual CAA and hasn't had a real let down since Christmas.

1 Ohio State over 16 Texas-San Antonio
UTSA dominated its First Four game, but the Roadrunners won't survive the poisonous nuts.

2 North Carolina over 15 Long Island

6 Xavier over 11 Marquette

Xavier finds its way to the Sweet 16 just about every year, so I'm not going to pick against the Musketeers in the first round.

10 Georgia over 7 Washington
Not sure why I picked Georgia here. I probably should have gone with Washington. Too late now. Both of these teams have some incredible athletes, and both fell short of pre-season expectations. Washington made a nice run in the Pac 10 Tournament, but teams that overachieve in conference tournaments tend to underachieve in the NCAA Tournament. I guess that's a reason to pick Georgia.

3 Syracuse over 14 Indiana State
I'd really like to pick the Sycamores here, but I can't, in good faith, pick any team that lost twice to Evansville to upset a 3 seed.

West:
4 Texas over 13 Oakland
I would have picked Oakland over any other 4 seed, but when Texas plays well, they're among the best teams in the country.

9 Tennessee over 8 Michigan
If the Volunteers aren't too distracted by speculation about coach Bruce Pearl's future, they should take care of the Wolverines.

12 Memphis over 5 Arizona
I can't think of any good reason to pick Memphis here. The Tigers haven't looked good all season, not even in the games they've won. But I think they have enough talent (albeit young talent) to pull the upset.

1 Duke over 16 Hampton

Southwest:
2 Notre Dame over 15 Akron
No amount of encouraging text messages from LeBron James will save the Zips from elimination at the hands of Notre Dame. (Why the Selection Committee didn't schedule the Fighting Irish on St. Patrick's Day is beyond me.)

7 Texas A&M over 10 Florida State
Chris Singleton, the Seminoles' leading scorer and rebounder, is questionable for Friday's game. Even with Singleton healthy, I think Texas A&M is probably a better team than Florida State.

1 Kansas over 16 Boston University
I would like nothing more than for the Terriers to upset top-seeded Kansas, but I have more confidence that purple-skinned space aliens will colonize eastern Europe this weekend than that Boston U. will win this game.

3 Purdue over 14 St. Peter's
My faith in the Boilermakers is waning, but I fully expect them to take care of the Peacocks.

8 UNLV over 9 Illinois
With apologies to my extended family in the Land of Lincoln, Illinois may be the worst at-large team in this tournament.

11 VCU over 6 Georgetown
It all comes down to Chris Wright's left hand, doesn't it?

Thursday Picks

2011-03-17T03:20:00.000-07:00

View my bracket here. | View contest results here.

I'm 1-3 in NCAA Tournament picks so far. The UTSA Roadrunners came through for me. No one else did. Fortunately, no points were on the line for the First Four. Anyway, here are Kevin's picks for the ~~first~~ second round games. I'll have to run through my Thursday picks quickly because I have to leave for work in an hour. (I'll only be working a half day because I took vacation time to watch this afternoon's games.)

East:
5 West Virginia over 12 Clemson
Clemson looked impressive in its First Four game, winning its first NCAA Tournament game in ages. Now the Tigers have to play West Virginia, a team one year removed from the Final Four, on 36 hours' rest. I expect the Mountaineers to move on.

4 Kentucky over 13 Princeton
It's nice to see Princeton return to the Dance, but their stay will be short. After struggling on the road for much of the season, Kentucky closed strong and will be a tough out in this tournament.

West:
7 Temple over 10 Penn State
I have very little confidence in this pick, but only in the NCAA Tournament will two teams from Pennsylvania face off in Tucson, Arizona.

2 San Diego State over 15 Northern Colorado

3 Connecticut over 14 Bucknell
Don't be surprised if Bucknell pulls the upset.

6 Cincinnati over 11 Missouri
I have no faith in Missouri to win a big game away from Columbia.

Southwest:
13 Morehead State over 4 Louisville
I'm putting a lot of faith in Morehead's Kenneth Faried, who will be the best player on the floor.

5 Vanderbilt over 12 Richmond
I feel obliged to pick the Commodores to survive at least one round, since Vanderbilt granted me a degree. But I'm not optimistic. The Spiders are much better than their seed suggests (and they have one of the great nicknames in college sports).

Southeast:
8 Butler over 9 Old Dominion
This was a tough call. I went with tournament experience (though this is the same ODU team that upset Notre Dame in the first round last year). Also, my mom earned her master's degree from Butler, so I like to pick them to win at least one game.

1 Pittsburgh over 16 UNC-Ashevi but lle

2 Florida over 15 UC Santa Barbara

4 Wisconsin over 13 Belmont
My first instinct was to pick Belmont. Then every single analyst for CBS, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated picked Belmont. I hate trendy picks, so I'm going with Wisconsin. The Badgers have a very good team, albeit one that scored 33 points against Penn State last weekend.

10 Michigan State over 7 UCLA
Frankly, I don't think Michigan State deserves to be in this tournament, but I'm not picking against Tom Izzo in March.

11 Gonzaga over 6 St. John's
The Zags have been playing well down the stretch and the Johnnies are without leading rebounder D.J. Kennedy.

12 Utah State over 5 Kansas State
Tough call, but I have faith in Stew Morrill and think this is the year when the Aggies finally get over the hump.

Kneeling in the End Zone Presents God's Bracket 2011, Mens' Edition

2011-03-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

Here is my annual look at the religiously affiliated schools in the NCAA Tournament.

Roman Catholic

Notre Dame (#2, Southwest)

St. John's (#6, Southeast)

Jesuit

Georgetown (#6, Southwest)

Xavier (#6, East)

Marquette (#11, East)

Gonzaga (#11, Southeast)

St. Peter's (#14, Southwest)

Augustinian

Villanova (#9, East)

As usual, the Archdiocese of Hoops is well represented. The Society of Jesus did especially well, placing five schools in this year's field. Notre Dame boasts a senior-led team and an impressive 14 wins over NCAA Tournament teams. A Final Four run by the Irish could lead to the canonization of Mike Brey as one of the game's elite coaches. Georgetown hasn't won since Chris Wright went down with a bad hand. But Wright will be back for the Tournament. St. John's isn't as fortunate. Leading rebounder D.J. Kennedy is out for the Johnnies' opening game against their Jesuit brothers from Gonzaga. The St. Peter's Peacocks will look to honor their namesake, the first Bishop of Rome, by upsetting a Purdue team that is playing without recently suspended guard Kelsey Barlow.

United Methodist

Duke (#1, West)

Syracuse (#3, East)

Wofford (#14, Southeast)

Boston University (#16, Southwest)

One United Methodist school in each region. It's a Wesleyan quadrilateral! Last season Duke achieved total sanctification (in the basketball sense of the phrase). The Blue Devils are capable of doing the same this year, especially if point guard Kyrie Irving is healthy. Syracuse fell from grace in January, but was justified by its play late in the season. Last year, Wofford earned its first NCAA Tournament berth. This year they're back. Boston U., home of the prestigious Boston University School of Theology, is back in the Big Dance after a nine-year absence. For what it's worth, both Wofford and Boston U. are the Terriers. I'm guessing there's a connection between United Methodism and small, English dogs. Perhaps the Wesleys had one.

Baptist

Belmont (#13, Southeast)

Bucknell (#14, West)

Anyone who has been fully immersed in tournament coverage knows that Belmont is a popular pick to upset Wisconsin. A lot of analysts also have faith in Bucknell's ability to topple a Connecticut team that is likely worn down after winning five games in five days during the Big East Tournament.

Latter-Day Saints

Brigham Young (#3, West)

Staying faithful to its LDS principles cost BYU its starting power forward. But thanks to the talents of Jimmer Fredette, the most famous Mormon to come out of New York since Joseph Smith, the Cougars have a chance to advance to the second weekend for the first time in three decades.

Presbyterian

Princeton (#13, East)

Neither Tulsa nor Davidson was among this year's elect, but Princeton is back in the dance for the first time in seven years.

Also: Vanderbilt (#5, Southwest) has historical ties to The United Methodist Church. The Commodores' opponent, Richmond (#12, Southwest), began as a Baptist institution. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) founded Butler (#8, Southeast) but maintain no formal ties to the school.

See Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports for an appendix with a complete list of religiously affiliated Division I schools.

Bracket Challenge: Round 1 Picks

2011-03-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

Update: View my bracket here. | View contest results here.

Over the next few weeks, Kevin Alton and I will be going one-on-one in an as-yet-unnamed bracket challenge. I'm getting a late start, which means that Kevin has already done the hard work of explaining the rules. Here you go:

The point system for my contest with my friend Josh goes as follows: Round one is a free round because it’s so nearly imaginary. It reminds me of when they introduced the division series to major league baseball; we all felt like it was an exhibition round. We resolved today that the four games of the first round have no point value for correct guesses and any incorrect guesses can be re-picked in the second round without penalty. The first round means that much to us. Round two is worth 10 points per correct pick; round 3 is worth 20, the regional semi-finals (I’m obviously reading off the bracket headings at this point) garner 30 points for a correct pick, and so on (adding 10 points per round) through the final which is worth 60 points for a correct guess.

Unless.

We negotiated re-pick rules as well; inevitably at least my bracket will have some major holes in it. Re-picks will be designated on our brackets with an ® and are only worth half of that round’s original points. While it might sound unfair for one of us to blow out a side and still be allowed to pick a winner in the championship, the rewards for picking that same championship winner from the beginning more than offset any imbalance. For example, if I correctly pick UT San Antonio to roll large and win the whole thing and Josh waits until the championship to wise up and pick them, he’ll receive only 30 points for that final guess while I, who picked them from the beginning, will not only receive 60 points for picking UT San Antonio over Wofford in the final but also an additional 150 points for the cumulative round picks that correctly got them to the final. Clear enough?

We are going on the honor system and we’re open to negotiation along the way if we haven’t thought it all the way through.

So here are my picks for the point-less (literally) first round:

ROUND 1: March 15-16

East:
16 UT-San Antonio over 16 Alabama State
UTSA is one of three schools in this year's bracket to have lost to my alma mater, the University of Evansville. So I'm pulling for the Roadrunners. It would be nice to be able to say that my Aces beat teams that actually won game in the NCAA Tournament. While UTSA finished seventh in the lowly Southland Conference, they made an impressive showing in the conference tournament, holding off regular-season champ McNeese State (apparently pronounced "MAC-neese state"). I like the Roadrunners to keep it going for one more game and to fell the hapless coyote that is Alabama State.

12 UAB over 12 Clemson
I'm not nearly as upset about the Blazers' inclusion as the talking heads at ESPN were. Conference USA was a strong league this year, and UAB won it outright. And, as much as I like Clemson defensively, I don't trust the Tigers in March. I'm picking UAB.

Southwest:
11 USC over 11 VCU
VCU probably doesn't deserve to be in this tournament, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them beat USC. USC has been hard to figure out all season. No team's résumé is filled with such a strange assortment of great wins (Texas, Tennessee, UCLA, Arizona) and terrible losses (Rider, Bradley, TCU, and Oregon State). But the Trojans have played well down the stretch, and I like them to move on.

Southeast:
16 Ark-Little Rock over 16 NC-Asheville
I hate picking teams based on conference affiliation, but I'm going with Little Rock because I like the Sun Belt better than the Big South. I also have fond memories of the UALR teams that overachieved in the late 1980s.

So there you go.

Here are Kevin's picks.

A Quick Lesson on Using Wikipedia for Research

2011-03-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

I saw this on Failbook. This person was watching the Oscars red carpet coverage last Sunday and noticed Russell Brand with his mother. S/he then edited Brand's Wikipedia page, changing his mother's name from Barbara to Juliet. The following day several media outlets duplicated the intentional error, running pictures with captions referring to "Russell and Juliet Brand." Apparently, there were plenty of entertainment photographers, writers, and editors who were willing to trust Wikipedia without doing any additional research or fact-checking.

Nicely done, anonymous Wikipedia editor.

As much as I love living in a world where someone who is bored on a Sunday night can mess with unsuspecting entertainment reporters without leaving the comfort of his or her couch, I hate that this practical joke fuels negative stereotypes about Wikipedia—that it is unreliable and a tool of the lazy. I believe (in all sincerity) that Wikipedia is one of humankind's greatest achievements and feel that it is unfairly maligned because so many people fail to use it properly. So here are some rules and pointers for responsible Wikipedia use:

There are plenty of occasions for which a quick trip to Wikipedia is sufficient. If you need some quick information on the economy of Equatorial Guinea, a list of iCarly episodes, or a summary of the Revolutions of 1848 for a post on a personal blog (such as this one) or to satisfy your curiosity, Wikipedia should be fine. Most of the free encyclopedia's information is sound and accurate, and most of the bad articles are obviously bad and/or have been flagged by other users. For discerning readers, the chances of passing on bad information from a Wikipedia article are slim. The risk of messing up the name of a comedian's mother shouldn't scare you away from drawing on the Internet's greatest repository of information.

Still, anyone can write or edit Wikipedia. And while Wikimedia devotees do an incredible job policing the site, there's always the potential that dubious information will contaminate any of Wikipedia's 3,578,882 English-language articles. Thus citing Wikipedia is not sufficient for any writer who is being paid for his or her services or for any website or publication that considers itself a reliable source of information. But that doesn't mean you can't use Wikipedia for serious research. Wiki writers and editors tend to be very good about citing their sources. Wikipedia articles are a great starting point: not only do they organize and summarize key information about their subject, but they also provide numerous links to more reputable sources.

You can take Wikipedia at its word that NASA initially referred to Eris as "the tenth planet," or you could follow the footnote to this press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Labratoory. Wikipedia will tell you that Evansville, Indiana hosted college football's Refrigerator Bowl in the 1940s, but it will also direct you to this newspaper clipping from the Evansville-Vanderburgh Public Library. The Russell Brand entry actually links to this article, which confirms that Brand's mother's name is Barbara, not Juliet. Despite Wikipedia's shortcomings as a source in its own right, it is an excellent tool for finding relevant articles, books, press releases, etc. (And it is a much better tool than the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.)

Finally, because anyone can edit Wikipedia, users have a responsibility to correct mistakes when they find them. If you come across a spelling or grammar error, fix it. If you notice that an article doesn't cite any sources, flag it. If an entry contains disputed information, voice your concerns on the talk page. Wikipedia is at its best when all users are invested in the quality and accuracy of its articles.

Bad Things Are Happening in Sri Lanka

2011-02-22T03:32:00.000-08:00

While much of the international community has been focused on volatile political situations in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere, bad things have been going on in the Indian Ocean island nation of Sri Lanka. January floods affected more than one million people and left more than 400,000 homeless. More flooding this month left another 400,000 people without homes. The media has invested fewer pixels covering the Sri Lankan floods than it did in its coverage of recent floods in Pakistan, Brazil, and Australia (and those stories probably didn't get the coverage they deserved). Yet, "UN officials report hundreds of thousands of [Sri Lankans] are in dire straits and in urgent need of assistance."

Even before the flood waters rushed in, Sri Lanka was recovering from an armed conflict between the government and a rebel group called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers for short). Like the floods, that conflict was responsible for displacing a few hundred thousand people. Now that between 25 and 40 percent of the nation's agricultural harvest could be lost, tough times are ahead for Sri Lanka.

Donate to Sri Lankan relief and development through UMCOR.

Follow @weepwith on Twitter for updates.

Cassy Herkelman Wins by Forfeit, Draws the Ire of Internet Commenters

2011-02-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

Last week, Cassy Herkelman of Cedar Falls, Iowa became the first girl to qualify for the Iowa state high school wrestling tournament. (Moments later a second girl, Maegan Black, qualified. Wrestling in Iowa is like basketball in Indiana or hockey in Minnesota; qualifying for the state tournament is a big deal for any wrestler.) Today, Herkelman became the first girl to win a match in the state tournament when her opponent refused to wrestle her on religious grounds.

If this story sounds familiar, it was the plot of an episode of Zoey 101.

I read a couple articles about this story, and in both cases I made the mistake of reading the comments. People argued that girls shouldn't be allowed to wrestle boys or wrestle at all, that Herkelman was putting herself in danger; they made unflattering assumptions about Herkelman's appearance (the ESPN article doesn't include a picture); some worried that a teenage boy might become aroused while wrestling a girl; some suggested that a boy wrestling a girl was no different than a man assaulting a woman (which our society otherwise frowns upon).

I've done a little reading up on this story, and there are a few things that these commenters—and popular Calvinist theologian John Piper, who wrote this 2009 tirade against female wrestlers—need to know/understand/keep in mind:

Cassy Herkelman has a record of 20-13, against boys, and she qualified for the state tournament as a freshman wrestling varsity. She's obviously a well-conditioned athlete who holds her own against boys in her weight class. I wouldn't worry too much about her safety.

While wrestling is a contact sport in which competing athletes attempt to dominate one another physically, it is still a sport. It has rules and regulations and officials. No one should mistake a wrestling match between a girl and boy for boy-on-girl violence.

Wrestling is a growing sport among girls. Apparently, in the off-season, Herkelman wrestles other girls and has won several AAU state and national titles. A few states sanction girls wrestling as an interscholastic sport. Iowa does not. If Herkelman wants to wrestle for her school, she has to wrestle boys. This sort of thing works both ways. For instance, several boys in New England have played for girls' field hockey teams. (Here is one example.) Like the girl wrestlers, they've attracted their share of critics. So there's no double standard. In this era of budget cuts when few schools have any desire to invest in a girls' wrestling team or a boys' volleyball team, maybe coed competition will become more commonplace. Or maybe everyone will end up playing korfball.

Tuesday Night Trivia on Thursday

2011-02-17T17:50:00.000-08:00

First, the answer to last week's challenge: The three letters, besides S that begin the names of 15 or more countries are B, C, and M. The exact counts depend on whether you call the country between India and Thailand "Burma" or "Myanmar." Now this week's challenge:

Several combinations of four letters can be arranged to create four uniquely spelled words. For example: E, I, L, V (evil, live, veil, and vile); A, E, M, T (mate, meat, tame, team); and E, I, M, T (emit, item, mite, time). Can you name a combination of four letters that can be arranged to create SIX uniquely spelled words?

I can think of one. It includes three consonants and one vowel. There may be others.

Sledding on a Snow Day

2011-02-11T06:39:00.000-08:00

Celebrating the Career of Sheb Wooley

2011-02-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

The guy in the picture is Sheb Wooley. I know him as Cletus, the principle in Hoosiers. I didn't realize until this week that Sheb also wrote and recorded the popular novelty song "The Purple People Eater," which topped the charts in 1958. He also appeared on Hee Haw and The Muppet Show as drunken cowboy crooner Ben Colder and had notable roles in several westerns in the 1950s and 60s.

Perhaps Sheb's greatest contribution to American art and entertainment was the Wilhelm Scream, a sound effect that has appeared in more than 250 movies and television shows. Wooley recorded the scream as a voice extra in 1951's Distant Drums, a "Florida western" about the Second Seminole War. Apparently the director needed a scream for a scene in which a soldier is bitten by an alligator and dragged underwater. The scream owes its name to Private Wilhelm, a character in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River who makes the sound when shot by an arrow. Here is a montage of 50 years of film scenes use the Wilhelm Scream

Sadly, Sheb Wooley died in 2003. Were he alive today, he would turn 90 on April 21. In his honor, we should all take time that day to watch a movie that includes the Wilhelm Scream. (Any Star Wars or Indiana Jones movie is eligible.)

Tuesday Night Trivia

2011-02-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

Yet another question involving the initials of sovereign nations:

By my count, the English-language names of 25 sovereign nations begin with the letter "S." (Southern Sudan will make 26.) "S" is by far the most common first initial. Only three other letters begin the names of 15 or more countries. Name these three letters.

Note/Hint: The exact number of nations whose names begin with these letters depends on which name you use for one of the countries. It has two, both of which begin with one of the letters in question.

Aaron Rodgers Thinks He Quoted Francis of Assisi: Tinley's Law at Super Bowl Media Day

2011-02-01T20:03:00.000-08:00

Today was Super Bowl Media Day (happy belated Super Bowl Media Day!), the day on which reporters who don't usually cover football ask the principle players on the two teams questions about anything and everything. Someone asked Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers something about his faith, and his answer included a quote that he attributed to Francis of Assisi: "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." (Thanks to Gavin Richardson for drawing this to my attention.)

"Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." It's a great quote (although one should not overlook the importance of being able to verbally articulate one's faith story and beliefs). I come across this quote at least once a month, every time it is attributed to Francis of Assisi. But there's no evidence that Francis ever actually said it.

Tinley's Law states:

The more frequently a quotation is attributed to a certain person the less likely it is that said person was the actual source of the quotation.

Or, worded differently:

The frequency of attribution is inversely proportional to the probability of authenticity.

See here for some examples of instances where Tinley's Law holds.

I'll be eager to see how Aaron Rodgers preaches the gospel without words this Sunday, but his performance will have nothing to do with Francis of Assisi.

25 Years Ago This Morning . . .

2011-01-28T06:05:00.000-08:00

. . . I was at Keystone Middle School (now Southport Middle School) on the south side of Indianapolis. I was in the third grade, but I spent two half days each week at the middle school as a part of I.D.E.A. (Increasing Depth in Educational Abilities), a pull-out program for weirdos like me. A teacher with a free period and a television in her classroom invited my I.D.E.A. class into her room to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, whose crew included Christa McAuliffe (2nd from the left in the back row), a high school teacher from New Hampshire who had been selected from a pool of more than 10,000 applicants to be the first teacher in space.

You know the rest.

If Nothing Else, I Know How to Play Tetris

2011-01-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Saturday I set a new personal best on Tetris, 514,170 points. If I had thought to record myself playing the entire game, this score would rank as the thirteenth best score ever, according to Twin Galaxies, the official keeper of video game records. Here's a picture:

Tuesday Night Trivia

2011-01-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I will no longer qualify or apologize for "Tuesday Night Trivia" challenges that I post on days other than Tuesday. From now on, i will post "Tuesday Night Trivia" whenever I get around to it, regardless of the day of the week. But I'm keeping the name "Tuesday Night Trivia" because it has brand equity (for two or three of you, maybe). Tonight's challenge is a straightforward question, about basketball:

Who is the NBA's all-time leading scorer among players who have played their entire careers with a single team?

Sometimes She Writes Backwards

2011-01-19T04:29:00.000-08:00

The other day, Resha Kate made a list of things she wanted for breakfast the following morning. Without thinking about it or intending to, she wrote every word and letter (except for the letter s) backwards. Fascinating:

Tuesday Night Trivia, on Wednesday

2011-01-12T19:07:00.001-08:00

I fell asleep last night before I could post anything. So here you go:

Imagine you're on an international road trip and you drive through four consecutive countries whose names (in English) all begin with the same letter. What four countries will you have driven through?

Hint/note: Depending on what you do with words like "Republic of," you could change "four consecutive countries" to "three consecutive countries" or "five consecutive countries."

We Act Like These Guys Don't Have Feelings

2011-01-07T04:20:00.000-08:00

This week fans of 12 NFL teams are thinking about their team's chances in the Playoffs. Fans of a few others—perhaps the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Oakland Raiders, and the St. Louis Rams—are happy to have seen their team take long strides in a positive direction and are looking forward to next season. Fans of the remaining franchises (including my Tennessee Titans) have spent much of this week thinking about how their team can improve itself, in hopes of either being competitive next season or creating an organization that, eventually, will be a perennial contender.

Improving a football team mostly involves replacing and upgrading personnel. Writers and talk radio personalities in America's depressed NFL cities make a living during the off-season identifying weaknesses and speculating on what players, coaches, and front office staff the team could hire to improve these weak spots. The media is not alone in these assessments. Coaches, owners, general managers, and even players are known to talk openly about needs and holes on their team's roster that need to be met or filled during the spring and summer.

Of course, these weaknesses, needs, and holes are people. At some point, ownership and/or management decided that each of the people was the best available person to do his job. And while some of these people didn't live up to their potential or didn't make the effort that was expected of them, many of them have invested years of practice and conditioning into their dream of making an NFL roster; and many continue to work hard each day on the practice field and in the weight room, even as writers, radio personalities, and their supervisors publicly question their abilities and refer to them as holes that must be filled or needs that must be met.

I don't know how much attention the average NFL player pays to talking heads, radio hosts, columnists, and bloggers. And I understand that most players have some idea of what they're getting themselves into when they enter the draft. But I can't imagine working in a profession where an entire community of fans and analysts makes a pastime of publicly discussing whether my employer could find a better person than me to do my job. I couldn't handle it.

Please Don't Bring the Lingerie Football League to Nashville

2010-12-31T06:21:00.000-08:00

Mitchell Mortaza, commissioner of the Lingerie Football League and former Lindsey Lohan boyfriend, told 104.5's Three-Hour Lunch that there's an 80–85 percent chance an LFL franchise will be playing in Nashville by 2012. He says that Music City is a "perfect market" and that Bridgestone Arena is a "perfect venue." (Read about it in the Tennessean or at the Scene's Pith in the Wind blog.)

This is my plea to the Nashville Sports Council: Please don't bring a Lingerie Football League franchise to Middle Tennessee.

The Lingerie Football League sends a message to young female athletes that their athletic talents are secondary to their abilities to entice men and conform to narrow and warped standards of beauty. It also reinforces our culture's unfortunate tendency to treat women of a certain age and body type as little more than sexual objects. To that end, he league fines its players $500 for wearing additional undergarments that may prevent accidental nudity. The LFL also has drawn criticism for refusing to pay players' football-related medical expenses.

Mortaza responds to charges that the LFL is nothing more than sexploitation by boasting that 100 percent of the league's players are former college athletes. Great. So young women who spent years conditioning and training as volleyball players or swimmers or sprinters, and who were talented enough to play a varsity sport in college, get paid to learn a new sport and play it in their underwear. Mortaza needs to be haunted by the ghost of Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

I first heard of the LFL when CNN did a story on the upstart league. The story followed a piece about two girls in South Carolina who had been successful placekickers for their high school football team. The juxtaposition of the two stories really upset me, and I wrote about it:

Placing the stories back-to-back seemed to say, "Hey girls, in high school you can work hard to make it and earn the respect of your teammates in a sport where girls traditionally have not been welcome; then, a few years later, you can continue your football career by stripping down to your underwear so that depraved men can gawk at you."

(The post from which I took this quote is the only one that appears when you search for "lingerie" on this blog. I also included the quote in my book Kneeling in the End Zone, which has climbed back into the top one million on Amazon.)

Nashville doesn't need the Lingerie Football League. Nobody does.

Grandma Reading to the Kids

2010-12-20T17:28:00.001-08:00

Kneeling in the End Zone Guide to College Bowl Games

2010-12-17T05:18:00.000-08:00

Here's your annual report of religiously affiliated schools whose football teams will be playing in bowl games. This year eight sectarian universities, representing six religious traditions/denominations, will be participating in the postseason, twice as many as last year. Here's what the faithful can look forward to in the coming weeks:

Latter Day Saints
Brigham Young (6-6) vs. UTEP (6-6) in the New Mexico Bowl, Saturday December 18. The spiritual descendants of Joseph Smith open this year's bowl season in a Saturday afternoon clash of former Western Athletic Conference rivals. (Appropriately BYU and UTEP are playing in a stadium operated by another former WAC school.) The Cougars and Miners met 25 times in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, with BYU winning all but one of these contests. While this year's Cougars squad isn't nearly as good as the great teams that have made BYU one of college football's most storied church-affiliated programs, the Cougars finished the season strong and face a UTEP team that went 3-5 in Conference USA.

Presbyterian Church (USA)
Tulsa (9-3) vs. Hawaii (10-3) in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, Friday December 24. The Golden Hurricane spent last Christmas at home. This year they are back among the elect, but they face a talented Hawaii team on the Rainbow Warriors' home turf. I expect that many Oklahoma Presbyterians will be checking football scores on their phones during this year's Christmas Eve services, eager to learn whether the Golden Hurricane are predestined for a bowl victory and a ten-win season.

Baptist
Baylor (7-5) vs. Illinois (6-6) in the Texas Bowl, Wednesday December 29. Usually Baptist football fans must put their faith in Wake Forest to deliver in bowl season. But with the Demon Deacons backsliding, Baptists should be thankful that the Baylor Bears have immersed themselves in the postseason. The Bears, who have performed poorly down the stretch, are blessed to play in a bowl game close to home against an opponent that has underperformed all season.

United Methodist
For the first time since 1989, two United Methodist schools are going bowling. Both are playing games on New Year's Eve, Eve. (If Duke can scrape together a few more wins next season, the United Methodists might achieve entire [football] sanctification.)

Southern Methodist (7-6) vs. Army (6-6) in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, Thursday December 30. Last year, the Mustangs showed college football fans what The United Methodist Church thinks of the death penalty, playing in and winning their first bowl game since the NCAA shut down SMU's football program in the late 1980s. This year SMU enters bowl season as the winners of Conference USA's West Division, seeking a second consecutive postseason win. If United Methodists weren't morally opposed to gambling, they'd have to like the Mustangs' odds against an Army team that went .500 against a weak schedule.

Syracuse (7-5) vs. Kansas State (7-5) in the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, Thursday December 30. After several years in the Big East's basement, the Syracuse Orange have to feel "strangely warmed" by a trip to the postseason. While the Orange owe their bowl appearance in large part to a non-conference schedule that included two FCS opponents and 1-11 Akron, second-year coach Doug Marrone has Syracuse football going on to perfection (with God's help, of course).

Roman Catholic
Notre Dame (7-5) vs. Miami, FL (7-5) in the Hyundai Sun Bowl, Friday December 31

Boston College (7-5) vs. Nevada (12-1) in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, Sunday January 9

Ben 16 and company have to be pleased that both Roman Catholic FBS football programs are playing in bowl games this year. On the other hand, Notre Dame fell short of preseason expectations and Boston College had its worst regular season since 2003. So penance may in order.

Notre Dame faces Miami in a lackluster reprise of the best college football rivalry of the late 1980s. (Now that Miami runs one of the cleanest programs in the country, the "Catholics vs. Criminals" moniker no longer applies. Then again, Miami just fired the coach responsible for the cleaning up.) BC has the misfortune of traveling across country to play a 12-1 Nevada squad that would be playing in a national championship playoff, if there were such a thing.

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
#3 Texas Christian vs. #5 Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, Saturday January 1. Once again the Horned Frogs are the class of church-affiliated college football programs. While TCU will win the inaugural Kneeling in the End Zone National Championship regardless of what happens in Pasadena, this year's Rose Bowl boasts the most interesting and exciting New Year's Day matchup.

Brought to you by Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports, by me. (Buy a copy if you haven't already.)

Tonight's Final Jeopardy Was Incorrect

2010-12-13T16:37:00.000-08:00

Final Jeopardy tonight:

In only 2 cases can you add two letters to one country and get another country; Austria/Australia and this pair.

Actually, there are three. Alex named "What are Niger and Nigeria?" as the correct "question." But there is another. Can you think of it?

Even in a Seemingly Non-Controversial Year, the BCS Has Plenty of Problems

2010-12-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

Many times since Auburn won the SEC Championship Game and Oregon won the Civil War Game (both last Saturday), college football experts and observers have remarked that this year's selection by the BCS of the nation's top two teams is uncontroversial. ESPN's BCS analyst Brad Edwards said that Auburn and Oregon were the most obvious number one and two since USC and Texas in 2005. That's probably true, but lack of controversy surrounding which teams should fill the top two slots has little to do with the BCS itself and doesn't mean that the BCS is a good system or even one that isn't a complete mess. Let's consider a few things:

The TCU Issue: Even if every person in the United States with at least a passing interest in college football were in agreement that TCU were, at best, the nation's third best team (behind Auburn and Oregon), the fact remains that no one has beaten the Horned Frogs on the football field. Until someone does, we cannot know for sure whether TCU is or isn't the best team in college football. As far as I'm concerned, any system in which an undefeated team has no opportunity to play for a championship is illegitimate.

Secondly, are we really sure that Oregon is more deserving than TCU to play in the title game? While Oregon's signature win over Stanford is impressive and unmatched by anything TCU has done, the Ducks have only beaten three FBS teams with winning records, compared to the five that the Horned Frogs have beaten. The two non-Stanford winning teams on Oregon's schedule are both 7-5. You can certainly make a convincing argument that Oregon is better, but the difference between the two teams is hardly obvious.

The automatic bid nonsense: Many have complained about an unranked Connecticut team with four losses (including drubbings at the hands of Temple and 6-6 Louisville) getting an opportunity to play in a BCS bowl game, simply because UConn won the lackluster Big East Conference, whose champion gets an automatic bid to a major bowl. And the Huskies are by no means the first mediocre champion of a "major" conference to steal a BCS bid from a more deserving team. The ACC has twice sent a four-loss Florida State team to a BCS game; and in 2004-05 a three-loss Pitt team (representing the Big East) lost by four touchdowns to Utah from the Mountain West (a conference without an automatic bid).

Meanwhile, the best teams from the non-AQ conferences must go undefeated to have a shot at playing in one of the major bowl games. The WAC has three teams ranked in the final BCS standings (#10 Boise State, #15 Nevada, and #24 Hawaii); the ACC has two (#13 Virginia Tech and #23 Florida State); the Big East has only one (#22 West Virginia). Yet the ACC and Big East have guaranteed slots in BCS bowls; the WAC does not. Why should a single loss on the road to a highly ranked Nevada squad keep Boise State out of the Fiesta Bowl or Orange Bowl? By any measure Boise is more deserving than Connecticut or Virginia Tech.

None of the six power conferences that control the BCS will agree to the elimination of automatic bids. These bids bring a lot of money to the ACC and Big East (money that perpetuates the inequality in the system). But eliminating the automatic bids would make for much better bowl match-ups. SI's Stewart Mandel has more on this subject.

Carelessness in computation: You may have read this story about how a data error in one of the computer polls used in the BCS formula put LSU ahead of Boise in the final BCS standings. Had the data been entered correctly, Boise would have been ranked higher that LSU. An outside observer noticed that a game between Appalachian State and Western Illinois had not been entered in Wes Colley's computer rankings, the only computer ranking used by the BCS that makes its data and formula public. The oversight caused a ripple effect that rippled all the way up to the top ten. The BCS corrected the mistake, and the error had no bearing on bowl matchups. But this glitch points to a larger problem. I'll let SI's Andy Staples explain:

we don't know if Colley's mistake was the only one. Of the six computer rankings the BCS uses, Colley's is the only one available to the public -- or to the conferences that run the BCS. The other five could be riddled with mistakes, and the entity tasked with creating the No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup would never know it.

Moreover, the BCS bowl matchups were set nearly one week between the Army-Navy game. This year that game will have little effect on how the computers rank the nation's top teams, but if any of the contenders had played either Army or Navy or if the number two and three teams were so close that a game involving opponents of opponents of opponents could affect the final rankings, this would be a big problem. And what if Navy had been vying for one of the top two slots (very unlikely but not impossible)? How does the BCS get away with slotting teams into the National Championship Game before the regular season has ended?

Christmas Tree

2010-12-03T04:58:00.000-08:00

It's real this year:

Even Writers and Scholars Whom I Admire Must Be Held Accountable for Back to the Future-Related Errors

2010-12-01T05:27:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean at work. It's an excellent book that expands on the findings of the recent National Survey of Youth and Religion and the that work Christian Smith and Melissa Denton did in Soul Searching. I recommend Almost Christian, along with Dean's previous books, to anyone who is invested in youth ministry or Christian education. Kenda is an expert in adolescent spirituality. She knows the subject as well as anyone, and I have no qualms with any of the conclusions she draws regarding the spiritual growth of young people.

But in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 4 in Almost Christian, Dean strays from her area of expertise and wanders into mine. She brings up Back to the Future. On pages 61-62 she writes:

You remember the flux capacitor, Doc Brown's trippy invention that makes time travel possible in the Back to the Future trilogy. The flux capacitor was the mythical contraption that powered the DeLorean time machine, sending Marty McFly back in time to save his parents and therefore ensure his own birth. Once Marty and Doc are safely ensconced back in 1955, however, a problem arises: where to find the 1.21 'jigowatts' of electricity needed to propel Marty home again to 1985? Only lightning packs that kind of wallop—which is when Doc remembers (great Scott!) that a bolt of lightning stopped time on the town clock and precisely 10:04 on a Saturday night in 1955 . . . .

As much as I appreciate Kenda's work, I can't let this slide. There are a couple errors here that I'd like to address:

Most significantly, Doc does not remember that "a bolt of lightning stopped time on the town clock at precisely 10:04." Marty does. Marty is the one who has traveled from the future. The Doc whom Marty encounters in 1955 has no idea that lightning will strike the clock tower in the near future because, for him, that moment in time has not yet happened. Marty has the information about the lightning strike because, back in 1985, a community volunteer had asked him to donate money for the restoration of the clock tower. Marty gave her some change, and she handed him a flier telling the story of the tower being struck by lightning at 10:04 on November 12, 1955.

Saying that Marty traveled "back in time to save his parents and therefore ensure his own birth" implies that helping his parents fall in love was the purpose of his journey. It wasn't. Marty's jump to 1955 was accidental. His objective was to escape from the "Libyan Nationalists" whom Doc had swindled. He made his escape in the only vehicle he could get to: a DeLorean that also happened to be a time machine. While Doc had briefed Marty on how the machine worked, Marty was fuzzy on the details, was surprised when he traveled through time, and had no hand in choosing his destination. (Doc had punched in a date from 1955 that was significant to him.) Upon his arrival in 1955, Marty inadvertently altered the course of events that would result in his parents' marriage and his birth. Doc explained the severity of the situation, and Marty got to work "[saving] his parents" and "[ensuring] his own birth."

(I won't quibble with "jigowatts," which refers to "gigawatts." "Gigawatts" [one billion watts] is normally pronounced with a hard G, but a soft G is also acceptable. The scientist with whom director Robert Zemeckis consulted pronounced the word with a soft G and Zemeckis wrote it in the script as "jigowatts." Dean, in this instance, gets credit for fidelity to the script.)

Dean's point is that getting Marty back to 1985 requires a specific combination of resources and circumstances. Christian discipleship, by contrast, is messier. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. There is no particular resource or program that will, without fail, mold a young person into a mature disciple. None of Dean's Back to the Future-related errors detract from her larger point.

Again, I'm a huge fan of Kenda Creasy Dean's Work. But Back to the Future is something I take very seriously.

Slate's Takedown of Yale University Press's Anthology of Rap: Why I Love and Hate the Internet

2010-11-23T05:34:00.000-08:00

Over the past month Slate's Paul Devlin has written an exhaustive critique—in several installments—of the recently published Anthology of Rap from Yale University Press. You can find it here, here, and here. Devlin discovered that the Anthology, which aims to be a collection of the most important rap lyrics since the genre's founding in the 1970s, has numerous transcription errors, many of which betray an ignorance of the songs context and many of which render a meaningful lyric nonsensical. Some of the errors also are identical to transcription errors made by amateurs who contribute to lyric archive websites. Further digging on Devlin's part revealed that the project's editors only consulted with their impressive advisory board briefly toward the beginning of the project (and never again) and that, while the editors sent proofs to about 30 of the featured artists, these artists were not given sufficient time to make corrections.

This paragraph—a quote from Adam Mansbach, founding editor of the hip-hop journal Elementary and a member of the Anthology of Rap's underutilized advisory board—is especially damning:

The Anthology is disappointing to me on several levels. Most importantly, this is a book that seeks to establish the relevance and artistry of hip-hop lyricism, and instead it's made many of the world's best MCs look downright incoherent by misrepresenting their words. When Ice Cube says "your plan against the ghetto backfired," and it gets turned into "you're playing against the ghetto black fly," more has happened than just a simple error in transcription; you've made an important song perplexing and impenetrable—while staking a claim, backed by institutional power and market presence, that your version is canonical.

Thank goodness for the Internet. Twenty years ago a critique such as the one Devlin has put together would have appeared in an obscure academic journal or possibly in an article in The Source (and it would have been much smaller in scope). The critique would have reached a small audience several weeks or months after the Anthology's publication. Today, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people who have read Slate's critique of the Anthology is greater than the number of people who own a copy of the book. An anthology of rap lyrics is a worthy project and is something that I'm sure many scholars, students of culture, and hip-hop fans would love to have. But surely all interested parties are now aware of this volume's shortcomings and can decide whether they want to spend $35 on a book with dozens of critical errors or wait for a revised edition (or a better anthology from a different publisher).

This discussion has spread well beyond Slate, inviting many people to take a close look at lyrics they have heard but never analyzed and giving many readers a greater appreciation of the skill that the best MCs bring to their craft. Well done, Internet.

On the other hand, I feel bad for the editors of the Anthology and others involved in its production. While there's much that they could have done that would have limited errors and made the final product stronger, I'm sure they worked hard to create what they felt would be a quality piece. As someone with many years of experience in publishing, I understand that editors seldom have time to take all of the quality control measures they would like to take; there's a lot more to publishing, after all, than writing (or compiling) and proofreading (such as typesetting, copyediting, hitting catalog deadlines and trade lists). I don't want to excuse these editors' mistakes, but I feel bad that the Internet has exposed every flaw in their work and that people who otherwise wouldn't have known about the Anthology are well aware of its editors' goofs. I feel for anyone who has to deal with that sort of pressure (even if the pressure is somewhat warranted).

That said, good job, Internet. To all people: Know that the Internet could call you to account for anything you do or work on. No matter how obscure the subject matter, there are people out there who care and who won't accept anything resembling corner-cutting. This devotion to quality control is in many ways a blessing, but it also puts a lot more pressure on anyone who dares to create.

Fraction Jackson Has No Use for Special Agent Oso

2010-11-18T07:52:00.001-08:00

Some years ago, I wrote a series of children's stories about a character named Fraction Jackson. Donald "Fraction" Jackson was a fifth-grade math whiz who earned a little spending money from helping people work through fraction-related problems. He was a lot like Encyclopedia Brown, except that he dealt in math instead of detective work. I never found a publisher. At the time I knew nothing about the publishing business and made the mistake of sending it only to major publishers. In retrospect, I feel honored that one of these publishers—Dutton, I believe—took the time to personally write me a rejection letter addressing the content of the Fraction Jackson stories. The Dutton editor was concerned that the stories were not realistic; she decided that the idea that adult community and business leaders would have no grasp of basic fractions was too implausible even for children's literature. It was a fair point. Children's stories often ask readers to suspend their disbelief, but suspension of disbelief has its limits.

Actually, the first Fraction Jackson story still lives on the Internet. So you can read it for yourself.

Enter Disney's Special Agent Oso, a cartoon for preschoolers that airs early in the morning on school days. Each episode of Oso involves a small child who faces a dilemma: A child needs to make her bed or brush his teeth or tie her shoes. All of these problems could be quickly solved if the child were to consult with a parent or older sibling. Instead, the title character, a 3-foot-tall anthropomorphic yellow bear, gets involved. Oso is never on the same continent as the child he is tasked to assist; sometimes he's even orbiting the earth in a rocket when he gets the call. Getting Special Agent Oso to the little boy who's having trouble cleaning his room always involves space-age transportation and communications technology.

I won't fault Oso for having its hero travel by bullet train and rocket; the jetpacks and satellites are what makes the show fun. Oso's technology is well within the bounds of what is acceptable for a children's show. The problem with Oso is what happens when the special agent reaches his destination.

Oso, you see, lacks the knowledge and skills to assist any of the children he's been summoned to help. He can't tie shoes or brush teeth or make a bed. He relies on the television audience to do his work for him. Breaking the fourth wall by talking to the viewers and asking them to respond is a children's television staple, but I can think of no other character who is completely helpless without the counsel of his or her audience. Dora and the Little Einstens invite their viewers to participate, but they are always in control. They know the answers to the questions they're asking and the success of their mission never depends on whether a three-year-old is paying attention to the television at a given moment. Go into any elementary school in the country and select a first grader at random. You will have found someone more qualified than Oso to be a special agent.

I'll give Oso some credit. The animation is great, and I'm sure that James Bond fans appreciate the not-so-subtle 007 allusions. But every time I watch Special Agent Oso I ask myself, "How could anyone argue that Fraction Jackson is too implausible to publish when Disney is willing to invest in a show about a special agent who has access to world-class technology despite having no discernible skills?"

Reasons Not to Order Your Pizzas Online

2010-11-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

You enjoy taking risks and want to increase the chances that your order will be incorrect.

You aren't convinced that it's safe to enter your credit card number at PapaJohns.com and prefer the security that comes from reading it off your card to some dude who works at the local Papa John's.

The neighborhood Papa John's (on certain nights) will donate 20 percent of what you pay for your pizza to your child's school, iff you tell the restaurant over the phone that you are affiliated with that school. (The website has no interest in one's elementary school affiliation.)

You can't recall the username and password for the family Domino's/Papa John's account, and your spouse (who created the account) cannot be reached.

Otherwise, ordering pizza online remains the best, most reasonable way to order food.

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-11-09T17:10:00.000-08:00

Tonight, Tuesday Night Trivia gets biblical:

Five books of the Christian Bible, Old and New Testaments, have exactly one chapter. Name them.

The Twelve Best TV Theme Songs, Ever

2010-11-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

Spending the better part of last week with the Who's the Boss? theme song stuck in my head got me thinking about the quality of sitcom theme music during my formative years. For about two decades, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s, easy listening fare that was too bland and/or corny for the lite rock stations dominated the sitcom-theme-song landscape. From Welcome Back, Kotter to Full House hard-to-listen-to sitcom music was a prominent part of the soundtrack of my childhood and adolescence. ("Welcome Back" by John Sebastian, formerly of the Lovin' Spoonful, actually received quite a bit of play on the lite rock stations and even hit #1 on the charts in 1976. That doesn't make it a good song.)

After dealing with "There's a time for love and a time for livin', a brand new life around the bend" for five consecutive days, I considered compiling a list of the era's worst sitcom theme songs and discussing theme music conventions that I don't care for (releasing a theme song as a single, with or without a music video featuring the show's stars; an opening song performed by one of the show's stars; songs that describe, explicitly, their show's premise; cover songs). Instead, I decided to be positive and to give you the Twelve Best TV Theme Songs. (The year each show first aired is in parentheses. Also, if you're wondering what television show the worst-ever theme song belongs to, that would be the Super Mario Bros. Super Show.)

12. That '70s Show (1998): "In the Street" by Big Star, performed by Cheap Trick. It's a good song; it was part of a memorable title sequence; and it suited the show nicely. Also considered for this spot: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Golden Girls (that's right).

11. Laverne & Shirley (1976): "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!" That alone is enough to earn Laverne & Shirley—and "Making Our Dreams Come True"—a spot on this list.

10. The Big Bang Theory (2007): I don't care for the Barenaked Ladies, but they did a nice job with this one. It's entirely appropriate for the show and is the ideal length for a TV theme song.

9. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1990): If you, like me, spend much of your spare time watching Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, you know that most of the sitcoms on these networks open with a song recorded by one of the show's stars. And if you watch these stations as much as I do, you also know that most of their sitcoms have bad theme songs. Well, Selena Gomez and Victoria Justice aren't Will Smith. While Smith doesn't have a place on my Top-50-Greatest-Artists list, he's a talented and proven entertainer. Moreover, when The Fresh Prince of Bel Air first aired in 1990, its title track was the best song that D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince had recorded to date. (A year later it would be surpassed by "Summertime.")

8. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970): I suppose that Sonny Curtis's "Love Is All Around" (the Mary Tyler Moore theme song) differs little from the easy listening fare I complained about above. But Hüsker Dü recorded a cover of it, and that's reason enough to give "Love Is All Around" a reprieve. But Mary Tyler Moore's theme would have made the list even if no Minneapolis punk band ever touched it. Take a break from whatever you're doing and sing along with me: "Love is all around, no need to waste it. You can have a town, why don't you take it? You're going to make it after all." Feel a little better about life, the universe, and everything? I thought so.

7. Monk (2002): I'm not sure why more television producers haven't asked Randy Newman to write and record theme music for their shows. His contributions to movie soundtracks have been, without exception, above average. I would guess that commissioning a Newman-penned opening number would give the average producer a 90% chance of upgrading his or her show's theme song. "It's a Jungle Out There" (the Monk theme) is among Newman's best.

6. M.A.S.H. (1972): M.A.S.H.'s instrumental theme song, written by Robert Altman's 14-year-old son (Altman directed the movie that inspired the television series), has a name, and lyrics. It's called "Suicide Is Painless." (Sing it: "Suicide is painless. It brings on many changes. And I can take or leave it if I please.")

5. The Cosby Show (1984): The The Cosby Show's eight seasons featured seven different variations of the same theme, called "Kiss Me." The tune evolved with the show and never went stale. (The show itself, on the other hand, went stale when it added Cousin Pam to the cast.)

4. SpongeBob SquarePants (1999): "Are you ready kids?" A unique and quirky theme song for a unique and quirky show. A perfect fit. Before Resha Kate or Malachi could talk, each could sing the "Ohhhhh" that precedes "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?"

3. The Simpsons (1989): The Simpsons has been on the air for more than two decades. In that time the characters have not aged and their clothing has not changed and the theme music and title sequence (aside from the chalkboard and the living room couch) have remained the same. Yet no critic of any significance has ever accused the show of being dated. Danny Elfman's jaunty theme music has stood the test of time as well as anything on The Simpsons.

2. The Twilight Zone (1959): No piece of music better sets the mood of a television show than the Twilight Zone theme. It's fantastic—not just the iconic G#-A-G#-E guitar riff, but also the horns and the percussion and the entire arrangement.

1. The Muppet Show (1976): Fun. Catchy. Timeless. Performed by Muppets. Part of one of the great title sequences in television history. The Muppet Show theme is so great that it doesn't need to apologize for being guilty of the sins of being performed by the show's stars and describing (more or less) the show's premise. When you hear the low brass and see Sweetums and Thog emerge beneath the arches of Muppet Theater, you know that "It's time to get things started with The Muppet Show tonight.

Halloween Pictures

2010-11-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Some of these didn't turn out too well; the kids weren't eager to be photographed while trick-or-treating. Anyway, Malachi was Mario, Meyer was Luigi, and Resha Kate was Peach (or Daisy, pick one) riding Yoshi. The picture at the bottom right was taken on "Decade Day" at the preschool. (The preschool has a week of themed dress-up days leading up to Halloween.)

I'll Vote for Jim Cooper; I Don't Know That I'll Vote for Anyone Else

2010-10-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Whenever election season comes around, I like to make endorsements. This year, I'm having trouble finding people—other than Jim Cooper—to endorse. Honestly, I've never been less excited about casting my ballot.

As usual, I'll be voting for Rep. Cooper as my U.S. Representative (TN-5). I like that Cooper eschews partisan politics and genuinely (I think) strives to act in the best interests of his constituents and the American people. I like that he personally answers my letters; and I like that he follows me on Twitter. Cooper's campaign is also behind the most clever TV commercial of this election cycle (and the only one I can stand to watch). Jim Cooper is a good dude, and I give him my full endorsement.

In Tennessee's gubernatorial election, I can't endorse anyone. I'm not impressed with Mike McWherter's efforts to run to the right of his Republican opponent (though such a strategy is common for Tennessee Democrats); the fact that he sided with opponents of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro during a July debate makes voting for him a non-option. Granted, my feelings about McWherter are irrelevant, because Bill Haslam will win this election by a wide margin. I prefer Haslam to McWherter; I think he'll do an OK job; and I like the idea of electing as governor the mayor of one of the state's largest cities. Still, I can't bring myself to vote for someone with whom I disagree on tax reform, health care, and education (the three issues most important to me on the state level).

Actually, my views on tax reform, health care, and education put me at odds with just about everyone running for state office in Tennessee. I don't think that "fight Obamacare" is a good strategy for insuring that Tennesseans' health care needs are met; I don't think that charter schools are the only way to improve primary and secondary education; I wish that more candidates would work on lowering tuition at state colleges and universities; and I support a state income tax.

That's right, a state income tax. I feel strongly that a state income tax, accompanied by a significant reduction in the state's sales tax, would give Tennessee a more just tax code and better meet the state's revenue needs. (Read all about tax reform in Tennessee here.) As far as I can tell, every single major-party candidate running for state office opposes an income tax, but none of them ever explain why.

So I'm not eager to vote for anyone for any of the state offices. (I'm open to voting for independent and third-party candidates and have done so many times in the past, but I haven't had a chance to do much research this year.) I may vote for George McDonald (the Democrat who's going to lose to Mae Beavers) for Senate; he says so little about the issues that I can't find anything wrong with him (or right with him). Still, a vote for McDonald would mostly be a vote against Beavers, and I'm not a fan of protest votes.

Happy voting!

Kneeling in the End Zone Game of the Week

2010-10-25T16:49:00.001-07:00

Game: Texas Rangers at San Francisco Giants, Major League World Series, Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. CST

Synopsis: Prior to Friday night, the Texas Rangers were the oldest Major League team never to have played in a World Series. The Rangers' National League foe in the Fall Classic, the San Francisco Giants, have not won a title since moving to California in 1958. (The Giants won five World Series in New York.) Neither the Texas Rangers nor the San Francisco Giants have ever been World Series champions. That will change in less than two weeks. For the first time since the Anaheim Angels won in 2002, Major League Baseball will have a new champion.
Commentary: New is exciting. When a new team wins a championship, struggling franchises that have never won a title (e.g. the Mariners) or haven't won in a really long time (e.g. the Cubs) get a glimpse and a reminder of what is possible. Scripture frequently reminds us that God is in the business of doing new things. Isaiah 42:9 says, "See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them"; in Jeremiah 31:31-34, amid the siege of Jerusalem, God promises to make a new covenant with the people of Judah; through Christ, God became present and demonstrated God's love and mercy in extraordinary new ways. And the Bible's final book reaches a climax with God "making all things new" (Revelation 21:5).

Much as either the Giants or Rangers will show baseball fans something new, we can give people a glimpse of the new things God is doing. Through relationships grounded in love and sacrifice and acts of mercy and justice, we can show others what God's new world looks like.

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-10-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

No one ever answered the last Tuesday Night Trivia challenge. So you know, the final entry in an alphabetical listing of Pope names is Zosimus. This week's challenge is a little easier:

This word, which appears in the names of four states, only appears in the names of two sovereign nations. What is it, and what are the two sovereign nations?

A Football Statistic I'd Like to See: Median Yards Per Rushing Attempt

2010-10-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

During last week's game against the Cowboys, the Titans' Chris Johnson averaged 6.9 yards per rush. For the entire 2009 season, Johnson averaged 5.6 yards per rush. (Tonight he averaged 4.3.) These are great numbers, but anyone who watches the Titans each week knows that these numbers tell us little about how Johnson runs. I would venture to guess that the majority of CJ's runs are for two or fewer yards. But the occasional 60- or 70-yard run give his yards-per-rush average a boost.

CJ is a great back whom opposing defenses must always account for. But, despite what his statistics suggest, he isn't a back the Titans can count on to pick up four or five yards on first down or three tough yards on third down.

Johnson's yards-per-rush average is much better than that of Eddie George, one of CJ's predecessors in the Titans' backfield. While Eddie never put up 170 yards in a single game or broke off an 80-yard touchdown run, he was more likely than Johnson is now to rush for at least three yards on a given play.

The yards-per-rush stat may be a good way to evaluate a back's overall efficiency, but it is a poor predictor of what one can expect a back to do on any single attempt. Thus I would like to suggest that the Elias Sports Bureau add a "median yards per rush" statistic. If a back were to have runs of -2, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, and 70 yards, he would average an impressive 9 yards per rush; but his median yards per rush would only be 2. Likewise, a back with runs of -1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, and 11 yards would average 4 yards per rush (much less than 9) and also have a median yards per rush of 4 (much better than 2). Using both the average and median stats would give the coach, broadcaster, or fan a more accurate assessment of a back's skills and strengths.

But the median stat would not be a pure median. I would not include any rush of two yards or less in which the rusher picks up a first down. These plays are designed for short yards in specific situations and should not count against a back's stats. Also, rushes resulting in a touchdown would only figure into the median if they were to raise the median. When a team snaps the ball on its opponent's 1-yard line, a rusher can only pick up a single yard (and only a single yard is needed). This single yard shouldn't count against the rusher's median yards per rush. If a back with a median of 4 ran the ball into the end zone from the 3-yard line, this 3-yard rush would not figure into the median statistic. (A 5-yard rush resulting in a touchdown, however, would.)

Vacation Pictures

2010-10-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

The Tinleys (grandparents included, cats not included) have spent much of the past week at Rock Island State Park. (I make no apologies for the lack of Tuesday Night Trivia and the Kneeling in the End Zone Game of the Week this week. Actually, last week's Tuesday Night Trivia is still unanswered.) Here are some vacation pictures:

Kneeling in the End Zone Game of the Week

2010-10-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

The Game: Mighty Ducks of Anaheim vs. Nashville Predators, NHL, happening right now (Preds lead 4-1 in the third)

Synopsis: This game, the season opener for both the Ducks and the Preds, is only significant to those who are fans of one of the two teams playing. For me, a Predators fan, this game is hope on ice. I'll let Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports explain:

At the beginning of each season in team sports, every team is 0-0: winless and undefeated with a winning percentage that mathematically does not exist. Each team has an opportunity to end the season by winning a championship. Christians believe that, through Christ, we also get an opportunity to start again. . . . Being re-created or reborn is a key aspect of any Christian's faith journey, whether this rebirth occurs (as some suggest) in a single transcendent life-altering experience or (as other insist) continually through the persistent prodding of God's grace. . . . Thus no one need be held captive by sin. Even if one is eliminated from the playoffs before the all-star break (in the figurative sense), by God's grace and through Christ's death and resurrection, one can leave these failings behind and look forward to a new season.

The Predators have ended five of the last six seasons with a first-round Playoff exit. They've had a lot of talent on their roster (especially for a small-market team), but they haven't been able to put together a postseason run in the NHL's deep and competitive Western Conference. I hope this year will be different. I have a lot of faith in the Preds' core of young talent—Shea Weber, Ryan Suter, and goalie Pekka Rinne (who left tonight's game with an injury)—and look forward to what the season will bring.

The Harvest

2010-10-07T04:23:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-10-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight's challenge involves names of popes:

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 263 men as having served as Bishop of Rome, or Pope. These 263 popes have had (by my count) 80 different names. Which Pope name is last in alphabetical order?

If you're interested, "Adeodatus" is first in an alphabetical listing of Pope names.

Kneeling in the End Zone Game of the Week

2010-10-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

Game: Cardiff City at Barnsley, Football League Championship, 9:00 a.m. CST

Synopsis: In the 18-year history of the English Premier League, all of the teams that have played in the league have been from England. (Makes a certain amount of sense.) But if Cardiff City, currently second in the Football League Championship, continues playing at a high level, that will change next year. For the first time ever, one of the teams in England's most prestigious football league will be from Wales.* The Bluebirds narrowly missed out on promotion last season and are poised to be one of the three Championship teams that makes the jump to the EPL in 2011. Can a Welsh team break into the highest tier of English soccer?

The early church was a Jewish group that worshiped in the temple in Jerusalem and followed the Torah. Prior to his vision of the unclean animals, Peter hadn't considered that non-Jewish people might also have a place in the church. Reluctantly and at God's urging, Peter visited a Gentile man named Cornelius, told him the good news of Christ, and welcomed him into the community of faith. This episode, along with Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, initiated a mission among the Gentiles that would see the establishment of churches throughout the Greco-Roman world. There was a place in the church for Gentiles, much as there may be a place in the EPL for a Welsh team.

This weekend, as you keep tabs on Cardiff City-Barnsley, think and pray about people whom your church may be excluding or overlooking. How can you welcome these people into your faith community?

Lest I exclude or overlook Cardiff City's opponent, I should mention that Barnsley has the unfortunate distinction of having spent more years in the second tier of English soccer than any other club (65 seasons in all). The Tykes are currently in 13th place in the Championship, so their chances of being promoted to the EPL next year are not good. If you're a Barnsley fan, I'd recommend getting a copy of my book Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports and reading chapter 1, "Hope Amid Wilderness and Exile."

* To be clear, two Welsh teams—Cardiff City and Swansea City—have competed in the top tier of English soccer. But neither has played at the top level since the creation of the Premier League in 1992. Swansea last played in the First Division in 1983, Cardiff in 1962.

A Cholera Outbreak in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

2010-09-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

Given the magnitude of the universe in which we live, I presume that intelligent species abound. I also presume that these species are located on planets so far from one another that no two will ever make contact. (Regardless of what James Cameron tells you, it's very unlikely that humankind will ever travel to the star system next door, let alone traverse the galaxy like the USS Enterprise—especially since taking care of matters on earth always will be higher on the to-do list than interstellar travel.)

Recently astronomers have discovered that large, spiral galaxies "eat" their smaller neighbors. For those of us on earth, images of one galaxy consuming another are spectacular. But who knows how many civilizations have been devoured by a hungry spiral galaxy. Shouldn't we mourn for our peers on other worlds who are destroyed by astronomical phenomena? Maybe. But given the immensity of our universe, it is possible (probable?) that, at any given moment, an intelligent species goes extinct.

At this point I'd like to propose what I call the law of emotional proximity. This law says that our emotional investment in a tragedy is inversely proportional to our distance from that tragedy. A murder or suicide in one's neighborhood likely will leave one sad and shaken. A murder or suicide in another part of the world likely will have a negligible affect on one's emotions.

Here's an equation based on the law of emotional proximity:

The emotional impact of a tragedy on an individual is equal to the severity of the tragedy divided by the proximity of the tragedy to the individual.

In other words, a natural disaster in Mongolia must kill and/or displace millions of people in order to provoke an emotional response from someone in Missouri equal to that provoked by a natural disaster in Illinois that kills and/or displaces dozens. We care more about things that happen close to home that we do about things that happen in other nations (or other galaxies). It makes sense. The most effective way to meet all people's needs is for localities to take care of their own. And for much of human history, a tragedy on another continent may as well have stricken a far-away planet. One thousand years ago, someone in North America would have been oblivious to a disaster or epidemic in Africa or India, and certainly would not have had the means to help any victims of such a crisis.

Today things are different. We have access to news from other parts of the world; we have means to raise awareness and to donate money and supplies. And we probably have a responsibility to stay informed and to act. Once upon a time, people made their clothes, grew their food, and bought and sold goods locally or regionally. Today, most anyone who lives in a developed nation wears clothes, uses electronics, owns toys and/or knick-knacks, and sets things down on furniture that was manufactured elsewhere in the world. Since we rely on the global community to provide us with inexpensive goods, we should pay attention to when our global neighbors are suffering.

I say all of this because recent months have seen a major cholera outbreak in Cameroon and Nigeria that has killed more than 1,000 people and infected several thousand more. But after much searching, I've determined that no one—outside of the group that set up this project at Global Giving.org—is doing anything. The Global Giving project is seeking the modest sum of $4000 just to help people in the northern provinces of Cameroon. In more than six weeks, it has only raised $60. So stop by and donate $10 (or more) then check with your favorite international aid agency and ask, "Are you doing anything to help cholera victims in Nigeria and Cameroon?" Then ask, "Dude. Why not?"

See also: Pakistan Needs Help

Update: Read this report on the cholera crisis from the Cameroon Tribune.

Kneeling in the End Zone Game of the Week

2010-09-24T04:51:00.000-07:00

Game: Texas Christian (3-0) vs. Southern Methodist (2-1); tonight, 7:00 PM CST; ESPN

Synopsis: Former Southwest Conference rivals meet in the annual battle for the Iron Skillet. SMU, whose school of theology has been home to renowned Wesleyan scholars Albert Outler and Billy Abraham, looks to spoil the national championship hopes of TCU, the most prominent school affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

SMU's Story: People under 30 don't remember that SMU was once a football powerhouse, winning unofficial national titles in 1981 and 1982. But after a pay-to-play scandal in the 1980s, the NCAA gave the Mustangs football program the "death penalty," canceling the entire 1987 season and severely restricting the program's recruiting, scheduling, and TV appearances. NCAA penalties so hampered SMU football that the Mustangs would not appear in a bowl game for more than two decades. The drought ended last year when the Ponies took a 7-5 record to the Hawaii Bowl, where they issued a death sentence of their own, executing Nevada 45-10. (To be clear, The United Methodist Church, in its Social Principles, opposes capital punishment.) This season, SMU looks to take the next step toward redemption under coach June Jones.

God doesn't give up on us, even when we do horrible things. Moses, a fugitive guilty of killing an Egyptian, returned to liberate his people from slavery. David, whom God punished severely for having an affair with Bathsheba and having her husband killed, served faithfully as God's anointed king of Israel. Christ tapped Paul, who had persecuted early Christians and overseen the stoning of Stephen, to lead the church's mission to Gentiles throughout the Roman world. SMU's story of redemption reminds us that nothing we do, no matter how reprehensible, can separate us from God's grace.

TCU's Story: The TCU football program also has a storied history. The Horned Frogs won a consensus national championship in 1938 and several times represented the Southwest Conference in the Cotton Bowl. TCU struggled in the 1970s and 1980s then, in 1996, lost its seat among college football royalty when the Southwest Conference disbanded (in large part due to the indiscretions of the Frogs' opponent this evening). Arkansas had already; Texas, A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor joined the Big 8 schools in the new Big XII Conference. The four Dallas/Fort Worth- and Houston-area schools were left to fend for themselves. TCU landed in the WAC then moved to Conference USA in 2001 before finally joining the Mountain West Conference in 2005. While the MWC is not one of the six power conferences and does not own a BCS automatic bid (and may never own one now that Utah and BYU are leaving), it has earned a reputation as a conference that can produce elite teams. This year, TCU, a BCS outsider, is in its best position in more than 70 years to contend for a national title. Even though TCU played in a BCS bowl last season and began this season in the top ten, the Horned Frogs earning a spot in the BCS National Championship Game would be unprecedented.

Thanks to TCU, Boise State, and Utah (and don't sleep on Nevada), this could be a dream season for college football outsiders—one that could see a school from a non-BCS AQ conference playing for the crystal football. TCU or Boise winning a national championship would shock college football fans, but it shouldn't shock anyone familiar with Scripture. Throughout the Bible, God calls outsiders to be leaders and to do the work of God's kingdom. Despite the ancient Near Eastern tradition of blessings and birthrights passing down from a father to his oldest son, God ordained that Isaac, Jacob, and Judah (none of whom were their father's firstborn and none of whom did anything to earn their birthright) would be blessed. God chose Gideon, the least member of the weakest clan in the tribe of Manasseh (with an attitude problem to boot), to lead Israel against Midian. God anointed David, and not one of his older and more accomplished brothers, to be the second king of Israel. And God chose Mary, an unwed peasant girl to give birth to the Messiah. God went beyond Israel's borders to call outsiders such as Rahab (also a prostitute), Ruth, Cornelius, and Lydia. One could make a convincing case that God prefers working with outsiders.

It may seem strange for football fans to see TCU ranked #4 in the polls this early in the season (and a win over SMU combined with an Arkansas upset of Alabama and an Oregon State victory over Boise State could lift the Frogs as high as #2), but it isn't strange to God.

Order Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports.

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Episode 11, "Non-Geographic Substates"

2010-09-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

Pretty much every nation, state, province, territory, parish, county, and municipality defines its borders geographically. Is it possible to have a non-geographic state? Sure. Why not?

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-09-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight's challenge is for Meyer, who is still upset about Pluto being re-classified as a dwarf planet:

Four planets have moons that are larger than Pluto. Name these planets.

You get bonus points if you name the moons. There are seven in all, four of which orbit the same planet.

Also, as I've tried to explain to Meyer, Pluto isn't even the largest dwarf planet. Eris is bigger. That said, all of the moons in question are larger than Eris too. (So, if you want, you can just substitute "any dwarf planet" for "Pluto" in tonight's challenge.)

I Just Became Aware of More George Lucas Star Wars Tampering

2010-09-09T19:05:00.001-07:00

Every few years since 1997, George Lucas has toyed with his meisterwerk, the Star Wars original trilogy. Some of the changes are obvious and ridiculous. Others are more subtle.

This evening, while doing some research on Wikipedia to find out whether Bail Antilles and Wedge Antilles were from the same planet or related in some way, I learned of a subtle change to Empire Strikes Back that I hadn't noticed before. For the 2004 DVD release of Empire, Lucas replaced Boba Fett's original voice (provided by Twilight Zone veteran Jason Wingreen) with the voice of Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones. In Clones we learn that Boba Fett is a perfect genetic replica of his father; so, yes, Boba's adult voice should be similar and perhaps identical to Jango's. But I'm bothered by the degree to which Lucas has gone to make the original films play better with the prequels.

The Fett thing isn't really a big deal. Like I said, I didn't even notice it. But I wish Lucas could be content with imperfection. The original Star Wars films are imperfect, but they're great. And nothing Lucas has done to buff out the imperfections has made the original trilogy any greater than it already was. (And if he decides to address the imperfections with the prequels, I fear his golden years will be long and miserable.)

Actually, I'll take this one step further: George Lucas should retire from Star Wars. But, before he does, he should give someone like Edgar Wright his blessing to do a Star Wars reboot.

The Monsters Are Due in Murfreesboro

2010-09-03T05:21:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes is "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." Cue Rod Serling:

Maple Street, USA. Late Summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and a flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 PM on Maple Street.

This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street, in the last calm and reflective moment...before the monsters came.

The episode begins with a shadow passing over Maple Street, followed by a thunderous noise and a flash of light. The power goes out and none of the cars will start. The neighborhood fanboy suggests that aliens are invading and that some aliens probably moved into the neighborhood in advance of the invasion, disguised as humans. The residents of Maple Street dismiss the comic-book scenario at first, but as strange things continue to happen, the alien invasion idea takes hold. The neighbors panic and begin suspecting and accusing one another of being aliens in disguise. Paranoia and violence ensue and the once idyllic neighborhood self-destructs. The episode's final scene shows two aliens overlooking Maple Street from a nearby hillside. The aliens remark on how easy it was to incite panic and conclude that the best way to conquer earth is to let the earthlings destroy themselves.

"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" first aired in the wake of the Second Red Scare, but I've thought about it a lot this week as I've reflected on the reaction to the Islamic Center of Mufreesboro's plans to build a new facility. The situation on Maple Street isn't completely analogous to what is going on in Murfreesboro (I'm not sure who in Rutherford County is playing the role of the aliens), but in both cases fear, paranoia, and prejudice have turned neighbors against one another.

If you aren't familiar with the controversy over the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro (ICM), it's similar to the controversy surrounding the Park51 project in Manhattan, but opponents of the ICM don't have the proximity-to-Ground-Zero argument to fall back on. (To my knowledge, Muslims had nothing to do with any of the lives that were lost on the Stones River National Battlefield.) Instead they argue that Middle Tennessee's Muslim community will use the new facility to train terrorists. Why else would Muslims build a swimming pool and a playground if not to train terrorists? Opponents ignore the fact that most of the approximately one thousand members of the ICM have lived in Murfreesboro for years, without incident, and are part of the community. Neighbors. The ICM is building the new facility because its current space does not accommodate the congregation's membership. (It's the same thing churches in Middle Tennessee do all the time.)

If you want to learn more about the controversy, watch this segment from The Daily Show.

What disturbs me most about this situation (even more than the alleged arson at the ICM site last weekend) is the way that people in the Boro have turned on their neighbors. It's sad. Ignorance, fear, and election-year politics—like the shadow, noise, and power outage on Maple Street—have caused a vocal minority of Middle Tennesseans to assume the worst about people who have lived peacefully in their community for years. People who have lived in the same neighborhoods, shopped in the same stores, eaten at the same restaurants, and signed their kids up for the same soccer leagues suddenly are at odds, and for no good reason. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

Cue Rod Serling:

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own: for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-09-01T04:46:00.000-07:00

(I'm actually posting this on Wednesday morning. I meant to do it last night, but I fell asleep.)

My dad correctly answered Friday's question on the phone last night. The two cities that can boast both a World Series title and a Grey Cup are Toronto and Baltimore. The CFL briefly expanded into the United States in the mid 1990s, and the Baltimore Stallions won the cup in 1995. When the Ravens came to Baltimore, the Stallions moved to Montreal and became the latest incarnation of the Allouettes.

Today's challenge also has a football theme:

What is the fewest number of games a team qualifying for the NFL Playoffs can win during the regular season?

I cannot remember a team making the playoffs with worse than an 8-8 record, but it is mathematically possible to earn a bid with fewer than eight wins.

Paying My Respects to Miss Baker

2010-08-31T04:39:00.000-07:00

If you spend much time on this blog (and I know that not too many people do), you're familiar with this image of a monkey with a rocket, the "album cover" for the Scrambies: Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcasts. I found out this weekend that the space monkey pictured is one Miss Baker. Miss Baker and her counterpart Able (the monkeys were named after the first two letters in the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet) were the first two monkeys (and the first two Americans) to survive a trip into outer space. Able died in June 1959, days after returning to earth. But Miss Baker lived until 1984. She is buried, next to her husband Big George, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This weekend, the kids and I made a trip to the Space & Rocket Center. While the purpose of our visit was not to pay our respects to Miss Baker but to take in the "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination" exhibit, I'm glad that we had the opportunity to visit the grave of this pioneering squirrel monkey.

Friday Morning Trivia

2010-08-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

(I'm using the Tuesday Night Trivia graphic because I still haven't made a Friday Morning Trivia graphic.)

Here's the challenge:

Two cities have won both a World Series and a Grey Cup. Name them.

Technically, it should read, "Two cities have been home both to a team that has won a World Series and at least one team that has won a Grey Cup." But you know what I mean.

Pakistan Needs Help

2010-08-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

While the United States has spent the last couple weeks bickering about replacing a Burlington Coat Factory in Manhattan with a religiously affiliated community center, floods in Pakistan have killed more than 1,500 people and left more than 4 million people homeless. Yesterday the World Health Organization announced that "cases of acute diarrhea have topped 204,000. The number of skin diseases -- such as scabies -- has topped 263,300." 20 million people have been affected and the UN "has termed the flood crisis bigger than the 2005 tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake." Yet aid to Pakistan has been slow compared to other large-scale disasters.

Wanna help?

The US State Department has established a Pakistan Relief Fund. You can donate $10 by texting "FLOOD" to 27722. You can donate what you want here.

UMCOR is on the ground in Pakistan. Donate to UMCOR here. Get your church involved by clicking here.

Follow @weepwith for updates.

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Epidsode 10, "Assorted Sports-Related Ideas Worth Ignoring"

2010-08-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

In this episode I give you ideas worth ignoring related to tennis, baseball, korfball, and swimming. Enjoy.

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."

Follow @weepwith

2010-08-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Weep With Those Who Weep (@weepwith) is a new Twitter-based effort to draw attention to disasters, conflicts, epidemics, and crises from around the world, particularly those that most North Americans otherwise would overlook. For example: ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan, a cholera outbreak in Cameroon, a fire at a nursery in Romania, and continued problems in Darfur. @weepwith also alerts followers to ways they can respond to these tragedies. Click here to follow.

Picture: "The Loss of Love" by Leslie Brown

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Epidsode 9, "Hexagon: Three Teams, Two Balls"

2010-08-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

In this episode, I introduce you to the sport of Hexagon, which (unlike other team sports) involves three teams playing on a hexagonal field with two balls, and ask your assistance in working out some of the details. At 30:55, this is the longest "Ideas Worth Ignoring" podcast yet.

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-08-10T19:43:00.000-07:00

Tonight, a two parter involving the Periodic Table:

1. Two vowels are not symbols for elements on the Periodic Table. Name them. (I count "Y" as a vowel.)

2. 14 symbols for elements on the Periodic Table are single letters. Almost all of these letters are initials for the English-language name of the element they represent. Two are not. Name them.

To clarify part 2: Were "scrambium" an element represented by the symbol "Z," it would be one of the answers.

A Proper Soundtrack for a Movie Set in the Mid 1990s

2010-08-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Middle Men, which chronicles the birth and rise of adult content on the Internet, is set in the mid 1990s. Since this is perhaps the first major period piece set in the era in which I came of age, I was curious to check out the soundtrack and see what music the filmmakers used to re-create that time period. Strangely, Middle Men has a very un-1995 soundtrack. "California Love" by Tupac and Dre, while a good choice, is the only 1995-appropriate song on the list. Assuming the story in the film continues into the late 1990s, "Hypnotize" by Biggie and "Tubthumping" by Chumbawumba also fit, even if neither is a particularly inspired choice.

Since Middle Men missed an opportunity to musically recreate my late teens, I decided to put together a proper soundtrack for a hypothetical movie set in the mid 1990s, one comprised entirely of songs released between 1993 and 1997, inclusive. I've given myself the rule of using no more than one song by a given artist. My intent is to choose music that 1) captures the time period and 2) lends itself to a movie soundtrack. ("INT - ANDERSON'S ONE-BEDROOM APARTMENT Dejected, Anderson throws himself onto the couch and stares at the ceiling; "Dropout" by Urge Overkill plays in the background. . . . EXT - AERIAL SHOT OF INTERSTATE 57 Anderson leaves the Adelaide, Illinois in his 1987 Ford Escort en route to Winnepeg. "Voodoo Lady" by Ween plays on the car stereo.") My aim is not to put together a "Best of 1995" or "Josh's Favorite Songs From the Mid 1990s" compilation.

I came up with a double album. Here it is:

1. "Voodoo Lady," Ween
2. "Old Friend," Rancid
3. "Bones," Radiohead
4. "I Ain't Goin Out Like That," Cypress Hill
5. "Nashville," Liz Phair
6. "Sappy," Nirvana
7. "She'll Come Back to Me," Cake
8. "Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check," Busta Rhymes
9. "I Took Your Name," R.E.M.
10. "Retreat From the Sun," that dog
11. "California Love," 2Pac and Dr. Dre

1. "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams," Weezer
2. "Hey, Johnny Park!" Foo Fighters
3. "C.R.E.A.M.," Wu-Tang Clan
4. "Lord Only Knows," Beck
5. "Muzzle," Smashing Pumpkins
6. "Dropout," Urge Overkill
7. "Smile," Pearl Jam
8. "Later Than Now," *asterisk
9. "Shutterbug," Veruca Salt
10. "Gin and Juice," Snoop Doggy Dogg
11. "Take Me Home," National Biscuit Company*

* Any soundtrack for which I am the executive producer will feature one song from one of my old bands.

Might Not Be Safe for Work

2010-08-10T03:39:00.000-07:00

This is not staged. My children (all three of them) decided, on their own, to dance shirtless on the kitchen counter to "Rock Me Gently." (Mally needed some help getting his shirt off.)

Note: I used 29 seconds of "Rock Me Gently," which is totally covered by Fair Use, YouTube!

First Day of School

2010-08-09T18:55:00.001-07:00

Friday Morning Trivia (or Tuesday Night Trivia on Friday Morning)

2010-08-06T05:05:00.001-07:00

This trivia challenge is a replacement for this week's Tuesday Night Trivia, in which I made an embarrassing error. Thus, the Tuesday Night Trivia graphic.

Here's the replacement challenge:

In the Western Hemisphere four pairs of neighboring countries have names that begin with consecutive letters. Name them.

To clarify: If Canada (C) and Dominica (D) shared a border, they would be the fifth pair. Also: Maritime borders don't count. (That would make things way too complicated.) So Bahamas and Cuba are not one of the pairs.

Hint: Two countries are part of more than one pair.

"Ideas Worth Ignoring" Podcasts Are on Hold . . .

2010-08-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

. . . until I figure out where my children put my microphone. Until then, listen to the archives here or at the iTunes music store.

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-08-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

First the answer to last week's trivia challenge:

Iceland, Ireland

Iran, Iraq

[The] Gambia, Zambia

Here's this week's challenge:

202 Major League Baseball players have had fathers who also played in the bigs. Of these second-generation baseball players, only one has been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Name him.

It's an easy question. I just thought it was interesting that only one of 202 second-generation players was in Cooperstown (though he won't be the only one for long).

I'm Not Sure It Works That Way, Anne Rice

2010-08-02T05:49:00.000-07:00

You may have heard about best-selling Vampire/Jesus novelist Anne Rice's Facebook outburst about leaving Christianity. If you aren't, here it is:

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

(Quick backstory: Rice grew up Catholic, but left the church when she was 18. She returned to the Roman Catholic Church in the late 1990s, and her reclaimed faith influenced her subsequent novels.)

Like Rice, I refuse to be anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-science, etc. Unlike Rice, I have no plans to leave the church. In fact, I'm not sure that faith in Christ works outside of Christ's body, the church. I could give you a laundry list of concerns and complaints about the universal church, about my denomination (The United Methodist Church), and about any congregation I've ever been a part of. Despite these concerns and complaints, I love the universal church, I love The United Methodist Church, and I love every congregation I've ever been a part of. These bodies aren't supposed to be perfect.

I don't want to be too critical of Rice's comments because a) I suspect they were impulsive, and one of the curses of the Internet age is the inability for any public figure to be impulsive without her impulses being over-analyzed, and b) because I can relate to her. About ten years ago, I left Christianity for a time, and frustration with the church as an institution was a factor in my decision. But my love of the church, with all its flaws, brought me back and helped me reclaim the faith I'd walked away from.

In reclaiming my faith, I also realized that Christianity is a communal religion. Christianity traces its roots back to the Hebrew scriptures in the Christian Old Testament, where God establishes a covenant relationship with a nation, rather than with individuals. And much of the New Testament was written to early Christian communities, giving them instructions on how to be the church, the "body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Granted, Rice claims to be a follower of Jesus, not Paul, and Jesus said far less on the subject of church than did the writers of the New Testament epistles. The word "church" only appears in the Gospels four times, all in Matthew. A scholar could probably make a convincing argument that Jesus never actually said the word, but that it came from the author of Matthew's reconstruction of teachings that had been kept alive orally. Still, nothing in the Gospels suggests that faith in Christ is an individual endeavor. Much of Jesus' teaching deals with how his followers should live in relationship with one another and with those whom they consider enemies or strangers. Jesus sent his disciples into the world as a group, and his final words to his disciples in Luke (24:44-49) anticipate the birth of the church in Acts.

I say all of this as a Protestant. Rice is/was a Roman Catholic. So she has less wiggle room than I do when it comes to disagreeing with the church on social issues. That said, the Catholic Church is far from monolithic, and I don't think that Rice would have much trouble finding a parish of like-minded believers on the West Coast (where she lives).

Speaking of wiggle room, I am a part of the ultimate wiggle-room denomination. The United Methodist Church notoriously avoids taking hard stands on most controversial matters; as a result, United Methodists who are (for lack of better adjectives) very conservative or very liberal often get frustrated with the church and consider leaving. On several occasions, I've heard United Methodists, unwilling to leave the church they love despite its flaws, announce their intention to "stay and fight." I'd prefer they stay and love.

See also: Scot McKnight on Anne Rice.

Tuesday Night Trivia

2010-07-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

For the first time in three months:

Name the three pairs of countries for which the names of both countries (in English) are exactly the same except for one letter.

To clarify: If "Frick" and "Frack" were names of countries, they would be the fourth pair.

Hint #1: For all three pairs, both countries are on the same continent. (At least in the cultural/political sense. When you consider continental plates, it gets more complicated.)

Hint #2: To make this work, you have to ignore the "The" in the name of one of the countries.

Why State Tax Policy Was Not a Major Factor in LeBron's Move to Miami

2010-07-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

I had been working on a lengthy post titled "Of NBA Free Agency and State Income Taxes" in which I responded to this Weekly Standard column. But some of my key points were not well supported and writing it was taking way too long, so I decided not to finish it. Instead, I'll just give you the part of that post in which I refute the meme that the lack of a state income tax in Florida was a major factor in LeBron James's decision to sign with the Miami Heat. I don't buy this argument for three reasons:

The amount of money that LeBron will save in state income taxes is less than the amount he gave up when he decided to leave Cleveland, especially for a team that has to pay two other top-level salaries. (The NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement allows a player's current team to offer him a larger contract than his other suitors.)

LeBron wanted to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and had been planning to do so for at least two years. Miami was the only team with enough cap space and flexibility to sign all three.

If playing in a state without an income tax were a major draw for NBA free agents, Memphis would attract a lot more high-profile free agents. The Grizz have signed exactly one notable free agent since moving to the Volunteer State: Rudy Gay, whom they signed to a five-year, $82 million contract this summer. Gay is a fantastic young player, and many in the media were surprised that Memphis signed him so quickly, but a) Gay was already in Memphis, b) he was a restricted free agent, and c) at the time of his signing the T-Wolves were the only other team to have expressed interest (though I'm sure that the Knicks, Nets, and Clippers would have been interested after they failed to land LeBron, Wade, and Bosh).

At any rate, if Florida's tax policy played any role in LeBron's decision it was far less a factor than playing with Wade and Bosh on a team with the cap space to sign all three, having a good opportunity to win multiple championships in the near future, Pat Riley, Miami weather, and Miami nightlife.

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Epidsode 8, "Freestyle, Stationary Dancing"

2010-07-16T03:40:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

I used to subscribe to the philosophy, "If you ain't moving your feet, you ain't dancing." Then I came up with Freestyle, Stationary Dancing: a fascinating art form that does wonders for the abs.

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."

Let's Stop and Think About Why We Have Reusable Shopping Bags in the First Place

2010-07-14T05:30:00.000-07:00

I have long been an advocate of reusable grocery bags. In addition to reducing waste and toxins from plastic manufacturing, reusable bags have the benefits of being inexpensive, durable, versatile, and convenient. Before today, I couldn't come up with a single reason not to use them. But this morning I learned that cloth bags are bacteria traps (if one doesn't wash them).

According to a University of Arizona and Loma Linda University survey, 97% of shoppers do not wash their reusable bags, thus creating "the potential for cross-contamination of foods." In particular uncooked meats leave behind bacteria, including E-coli, that can befoul other foods.

The obvious solution to the bacteria problem is to wash one's shopping bags. But doing extra loads of laundry uses a lot of water and power and introduces detergents into the water supply. So if you use more than a dozen cloth bags each time you go to the grocery store, and if you faithfully wash these bags after each trip, you're really just trading one environmentally questionable practice for another.

The obvious eco-friendly solution, then, would be to designate one or two bag(s) the meat bag(s) and one or two bag(s) the fresh veggie bag(s) and wash these bags regularly while washing the other bags infrequently. Two or three bags could squeeze into existing loads of laundry without requiring one to use additional water, power, or detergent. Problem solved, more or less.

As I was researching the bacteria-in-bags problem, I came across this post from Pocket Change's Be Green blog. (Pocket Change, from what I can gather, is a network of websites devoted to shopping.) It suggests two things: First, it recommends washing all one's shopping bags weekly with a powerful detergent. Again, I think this undoes a lot of the good that comes from using cloth bags in the first place, especially since Be Green uses this suggestion to promote regular All detergents instead of recommending eco-friendly alternatives. Second, it recommends anti-bacterial wipes. The disposable kind. The kind that you use once and throw away. Be Green doesn't even make the effort to recommend biodegradable wipes.

I fear that, for the Be Green blogger (and many, many others out there, possibly including myself), going green is more about trends and appearances than about conservation or making sacrifices in the interest of preserving the natural world (including the air we breathe and the water we drink). Two years ago, at its General Conference, The United Methodist Church voted to fight global warming through a campaign that includes "printing and mailings." In other words, my denomination decided to save the environment by wasting paper. But I don't mean to pick on Be Green or the UMC. As a culture, we're becoming a society of greenwashers. We buy products and join campaigns that make us feel green, but too often don't consider the actual environmental impact of our purchases and actions.

Preserving the natural world isn't about following trends. It's about what we use and what we waste, what we do and how we do it.

BREAKING NBA FREE AGENCY NEWS

2010-07-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Twitter and ESPN tell me that LeBron James likely will announce later today that he'll be signing with the Miami Heat, where he'll join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. After signing three top-tier free agents to max (or close-to-the-max) contracts, Miami won't have much money left to sign many of its remaining 10 free agents or to sign other veteran free agents from other teams. The Heat will have to surround the Big Three with rookies, Mario Chalmers, Michael Beasley, and journeymen who are willing to play for the league minimum.

With that in mind, I have an announcement to make: I am interested in signing with the Miami Heat and playing for the league minimum. Pat Riley, if you have reservations about making this happen, consider the following:

If you sign LeBron, are you really going to have enough money left over to sign anyone better than me? (Don't answer that.)

I once hit 81 consecutive free throws during my lunch break. You might as well sign me just to have someone to take technical foul shots.

I was the sixth man on a six-man team that won the C-league intramural title at the University of Evansville in 1999. So I know what it takes to win championships.

I've decided to be #33, in honor of Larry Bird.

Technical Difficulties With the "Ideas Worth Ignoring" Podcast

2010-07-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

I'm having some technical problems with my podcast feed. It isn't playing well with iTunes right now. But I am aware of the problem and am working to fix it. In the meantime, you can directly download the latest podcast—"Clock Reform, Part II"—by clicking here.

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Epidsode 7, "Clock Reform, Part II: Metric Time"

2010-07-02T06:51:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

The second of two podcasts on clock reform, this episode looks at the bizarre way in which we count the hours of the day (starting over at noon, sticking on 12 for another hour after we start over, and so forth) and proposes an alternative.

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."

How All of Us Are Supporting the Worst Humanitarian Crisis Since the Holocaust

2010-06-29T06:07:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I need to learn about conflict minerals: minerals such as cassiterite, wolframite, coltan, and gold that are (quoting Wikipedia) "mined in conditions of armed conflict and human rights abuses, notably in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by the Congolese National Army and various armed rebel groups, including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda." (Cassiterite, wolframite, and coltan are sources of tin, tungsten, and tantalum, respectively.) Loot from these Congolese mines funds armed groups that have been responsible for millions of deaths and rapes since the beginning of the Second Congo War in the 1990s.

These minerals pass through several hands after they leave the Congo, ultimately finding their way to the world's manufacturers of mobile phones, laptops, mp3 players, and video game consoles: Intel, Apple, HP, Nintendo, Sony, Nokia, and many others. Basically, if you play video games, send text messages, or access the Internet, you are supporting (if only indirectly) the deadliest armed conflict since World War II. I'm not judging you, because I'm as guilty as anyone.

Before I continue, I should point out that, as of 2008, 5.4 million people had died and millions more had been raped or displaced due to the Second Congo War, a war fought, in part, over control to lucrative mineral mines. Though the war technically ended in 2003, the violence continues, as do rampant malnutrition and disease. The Second Congo War (including related postwar violence, hunger, and illness) is, without qualification, the worst thing to happen to human beings on this planet since the Holocaust. But no one pays much attention to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Moving on—One's first instinct upon learning that a product one buys is responsible for untold human rights violations is to stop buying that product. The problem in this situation is that abstaining from the guilty products means withdrawing from industrialized society. Few people who aren't Wendell Berry could swear off computers and mobile phones; and finding electronic devices free of conflict minerals is nearly impossible. Negative reinforcement (i.e. boycotts) won't work. Here are a couple solutions that might:

Legislation: Fortunately, a provision (introduced by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas) in the financial regulatory reform bill currently before Congress . . .

. . . requires any publicly traded company that uses certain minerals to file reports annually with the Securities and Exchange Commission certifying whether the minerals originated in Congo or neighboring countries. It also requires them to report what steps the company took to ensure that the purchase of these minerals did not benefit armed groups in Africa.

So that's a step in the right direction.

Positive Reinforcement: While it would be nearly impossible for consumers to punish offending tech companies, consumers could reward companies that take measure to ensure that their products do not contain conflict minerals. If we are willing to spend a little more or wait a little longer to support companies that eschew conflict minerals, maybe we could create a market for "peace computers" (or "happy computers"—it's the best I can come up with).

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I'd like to buy one that is free of conflict minerals or, at least, one made by a company that has taken steps to ensure that it will no longer support violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Take a few minutes to watch this video from the Enough Project:

Thoughts on Conference Realignment

2010-06-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

The Great Conference Realignment of 2010, which many people (but not me) thought would result in four 16-team superconferences, came to a halt (for now) on Monday when Texas decided to stay in the Big 12. Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech—The News to UT's Huey Lewis—also stayed put, as did Texas A&M, who had been flirting with the SEC. Because Texas and friends decided that they weren't too good for the Big 12, the Pac 10 will not expand to 16 teams across three time zones, the leftover Big 12 teams will not have to join the Mountain West or rebuild their conference with Conference USA teams, and none of the other power conferences will be scrambling to keep up with the Pac 16.

Some other thoughts:

I'm mostly indifferent about Nebraska's move to the Big Ten. While I'm mildly interested in seeing the Cornhuskers play Iowa and Wisconsin and Ohio State in football, I was raised on Big Ten basketball. Nebraska never has won a men's NCAA tournament game and hasn't been invited to the Big Dance since 1998. Big-money sports aside, I'm looking forward to some epic Nebraska-Penn State women's volleyball contests.

According to CNBC's Darren Rovell, the cost of getting a women's soccer team from Lincoln, Nebraska to State College, Pennsylvania is $20,000. Imagine how much money it would have cost for Washington State to get its golf and track teams from Pullman, Washington to Austin or Norman. I wonder how many of the millions of new college football TV dollars would have been lost covering travel costs for non-money sports.

Texas envy, resentment toward the Big 12's unequal revenue-sharing arrangement that allows Texas to pocket several million more TV dollars than Iowa State or Missouri, nearly destroyed the Big 12. Appeasing Texas with another lopsided TV arrangement saved the conference.

I doubt that the Big 12 will add two more teams. Any additional teams would have to bring in enough revenue so that all of the schools would benefit more from splitting the money 12 ways than they already would from splitting the money 10 ways. (The reinstatement of the conference championship football game would account for some of this revenue.) If the conference were to expand, I would look for the Big 12 to add BYU and Memphis. BYU brings with it a national following and the large and rapidly growing Salt Lake City market. It also has a strong academic reputation. Memphis brings with it Fred Smith, the FedEx CEO who has offered $10 million per year to any BCS-affiliated conference that takes Memphis. (Smith's son is the quarterback for the Memphis football team.) Two Memphis-Kansas basketball games a year would also be enticing (but, as we all know, basketball money is negligible when compared to football money). I'd love to see the Big 12 add TCU and SMU, reuniting these universities with their old Southwest Conference brethren. But neither of these schools brings any real money to the table.

As I mentioned above, Fred Smith of FedEx will pay $10 million annually to any BCS conference that takes Memphis. Not to be outdone, I will pay $10 per year to any power conference that takes Evansville as a non-football school.

I expect the Pac 10 to invite Utah in the next couple weeks, and I think that Utah will be a better pick-up than Colorado. Utah has a perennial top 25 football team that is capable of bringing in big-time bowl dollars. While Denver is a bigger market than Salt Lake City, people in SLC care about Utah a lot more than people in Denver care about Colorado. Unlike Colorado and seven other current Pac 10 teams, Utah is not a member of the prestigious American Association of Universities, but UU has a good academic reputation (a Tier 1 National University according to US News and World Report) and (unlike Colorado) did not lose scholarships this year due to a poor Academic Performance Rating. Utah also has a better men's basketball program.

Last week, the Mountain West looked like a lock to get a BCS automatic bid in the next couple years. The dissolution of the Big 12 would have made the MWC a top-six conference, especially if it were to add the Big 12 leftovers. But, with the addition of Boise State, the Mountain West is still in pretty good shape—unless the Pac 10 takes Utah. Without Utah, the MWC has little chance of becoming a BCS automatic qualifier. Replacing Utah with Houston or Fresno State (both of which have football teams that do pretty well against tough non-conference schedules) and bringing in someone like Howard Schnellenberger to fix New Mexico's football program would slow the bleeding.

The Tinleys Recommend Blocks and Marbles

2010-06-10T05:02:00.001-07:00

Blocks and marbles has become a preferred activity in the Tinley household. Here's Meyer to show you how it works:

Click here to order the Blocks & Marbles super set from Amazon.

(And if you like our video, YouTube thinks that you might also like several videos of New Kids on the Block performing in Tinley Park, Illinois.)

My Two-State Solution

2010-06-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to comment on this recent Israeli military kerfuffle involving the flotilla raid off the coast of the Gaza Strip. As far as I'm concerned, the leaders of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority long ago exhausted their moral capital. The powers that be on both sides have been and continue to be stubborn and hawkish, and they act like children—children with access to bombs and rockets. Obviously, these leaders don't rise to power in a vacuum. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are responsible for electing and re-electing these stubborn, hawkish leaders; and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are responsible for deciding that they would like Hamas to govern them. I must conclude that most of the people living within Israel's borders (including the Occupied Territories) are not interested in a peaceful resolution to this conflict so long as such a resolution requires their side to make any significant concessions. Thus dividing the land into two autonomous nations isn't really a viable option.

My solution involves creating a second state in some other part of the world. The purpose of the second state would not be to have separate Jewish and Arab countries but to have one country for stubborn, hawkish Israelis and Palestinians and one state for Israelis and Palestinians who want to live peaceful and productive lives without first eliminating or severely crippling the other side. Ideally, the mature, peace-loving people would get to keep the homeland, but asking the militants to move will only cause bigger problems. So the soldiers, settlers, and suicide bombers can duke it out on the banks of the Jordan while their brothers and sisters enjoy a peaceful life elsewhere.

Of course, there's still the question of the location of the second state. It would need to be an area that is sparsely populated and whose few residents would be on board with this plan or willing to relocate if they were properly compensated for their trouble. (We wouldn't want another situation where two groups of people feel as though they have a legitimate claim to the same land.) An area with a Mediterranean climate would be preferable, but those areas tend to be densely populated. I would suggest using land currently shared by Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. That area is safe, sparsely populated, (somewhat) arable, and rich in natural resources; and the new state would border two stable, peaceful, and sympathetic nations.

But let me know if you have a better idea.

Image from the New York Times.

Is Your Dad Into Jesus and Sports?

2010-06-01T04:06:00.000-07:00

Now that Mother's Day, Pentecost, Towel Day, Trinity Sunday, and Memorial Day have passed, you can focus your attention on Father's Day (unless you're really into Flag Day, in which case, I'll talk to you on June 15; if you celebrate Juneteenth, which this year falls on the day before Father's Day, you'll need to go ahead and do your Father's Day shopping while your planning your Juneteenth festivities).

If you need a great Father's Day gift, if your dad is a sports fan, and if your dad is a Christian or a Christian tradition-and-theology enthusiast, buy him a copy of my book, Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports. If you can find me between now and then, I'll even sign it.

Happy Towel Day!

2010-05-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Happy Towel Day! (I actually took a towel to work today but left it in my car.) To celebrate, here are my four favorite paragraphs by Douglas Adams (and possibly the finest four paragraphs of prose ever written in English). From the beginning of chapter 15 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with. There is no problem about changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s “Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations”. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intension of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstration, pausing only to note that the term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

Celebrate Pentecost by Taking a Quiz

2010-05-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Pentecost! If you have an opportunity to take a break from the Pentecost celebrations that surely will fill much of your day, try this Pentecost quiz that I put together for Beliefnet.

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Epidsode 6, "Clock Reform, Part I: Metric Time"

2010-05-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

I hope to redeem myself after the previous episode ("Tuesday Night Disco") with this episode, the first of two podcasts about clock reform. This installment advocates discarding hours, minutes, and seconds in favor of a decimal, metric system of time-keeping.

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."

I Wonder What Sumatra Is Like Right Now

2010-05-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

Though most major news outlets overlooked or gave only passing coverage to the floods that ravaged Middle Tennessee less than two weeks ago, by late last week Nashville had become a major national news story. It remained so for about two days; then just about everyone outside of Tennessee, southwestern Kentucky, and northern Mississippi moved on.

Most people here haven't moved on. For many, moving on is not an option. In greater Nashville, flood relief and cleanup will be a major news story for several months. And even after the local news outlets move on, there will still be neighborhoods that need help cleaning up and rebuilding.

With that in mind, I wonder what things are like in Thailand and Sumatra and Sri Lanka right now. Little more than five years ago an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Indian Ocean took the lives of more than 200,000 people. I wonder what Azad Kashmir, where a magnitude 7.6 earthquake killed nearly 80,000 people, is like. I wonder what Sichuan, which lost nearly 70,000 people to an earthquake in 2008, is like. I wonder what Haiti is like right now. And I wonder what Cedar Rapids, which less than two years ago experienced flooding that was more widespread (albeit not as deadly) than this month's Tennessee floods, is like right now.

I'm not sure what my point is, except to say that national media outlets devoted a few days to the flooding in Middle Tennessee, but cleanup efforts here will last months, or even years. And, while I am aware of some out-of-state church groups who have made plans to join the relief effort this summer, I imagine that, by Labor Day, most Americans will have only vague memories of the Nashville flood. So what of this decade's many other historically deadly and destructive natural disasters? How many people have forgotten them? I know I have. I mean, when given the task of making a list of twenty-first-century disasters, I can come up with quite a few; but I've done nothing in recent months and years to raise awareness of or donate money to post-quake Pakistan or post-tsunami Thailand or post-flood Iowa. Like most people, I've moved on. The public's capacity for empathy and generosity is limited.

If you'd like to donate to the Middle Tennessee relief efforts, text REDCROSS to 90999. Then consider also donating to UMCOR's International Disaster Response.

Saving Pro Basketball in Indiana

2010-05-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

After last night's death-of-basketball-in-Cleveland event, my first instinct was to come up with a plan that the Pacers could use to lure LeBron James to Naptown. Why not? Investing all of the teams' resources into a vain effort to attract a superstar with no desire to move to Indiana would still be more productive than anything Larry Bird has done in the last three off seasons. (Sorry, Larry.)

Then I had a better idea. The Pacers should change their name to the Indiana Joneses and should rename Conseco Fieldhouse "The Temple of Doom." (I'm really not sure why this hasn't happened already.) Under normal circumstances, no one wants to pay money to see Mike Dunleavy, Jr. and Troy Murphy drop a regular season home game to the Charlotte Bobcats. But if bullwhips, stubble, and legendary artifacts are involved, everything changes.

Fast forward to December 2013. I foresee two possible scenarios:

Scenario 1
Down 62-47 to the Milwaukee Bucks in the third quarter, the Joneses call timeout. The Temple of Doom stadium announcer says over the PA, "All right, Jones fans! Cover your eyes! It's time to OPEN——THE——ARK!" 18,000 fans, all wearing matching fedoras, yell "open the ark" in unison with the announcer. (And those who don't cover their eyes will feel the wrath of the face-melting light of God.)

Scenario 2
In Seattle's new Bill Gates Arena, one fan turns to another and asks, "Why does our new team have so many 6'10" white guys?" The other fan responds, "Good question. And how is it that our team can miss the Playoffs every year without ever getting a good draft pick?"

Scrambies Declares South Pasadena High Track Team the Rio Hondo League Champion

2010-05-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

From SI.com:

This is the story of a high school pole vaulter whose successful leap in the last event won the meet and the league championship for her team -- until an opposing coach pointed out she should be disqualified for breaking a rule, reversing the outcome so that his team captured victory and the league title.

The girl's infraction? Wearing a friendship bracelet.

That's right. South Pasadena High School's Robin Laird (pictured) clinched the league title for her team with a clutch performance in the pole vault, the meet's final event. Moments later officials disqualified Laird because, as opposing coach Mike Knowles (of Monrovia High) pointed out, she was wearing braided colored strings around her wrist. Section 3, Article 3 of the National Federation of State High School Associations says: "Jewelry shall not be worn by contestants." A friendship bracelet is jewelry. I guess. Because of the disqualification, Monrovia won (in some sense of the word) the Rio Hondo League.

Had an official noticed the bracelet and disqualified Laird, his or her actions would be defensible, albeit petty. But officials in this case acted at the suggestion of a coach who waited until Laird had clinched the championship for South Pasadena to point out the violation. Laird and her teammates lost the title because Monrovia's coach was a bad sport and a sore loser. (Sorry. He was.)

Just about anyone who has played sports at any level has heard gruesome stories about athletes and jewelry. I remember hearing a story about a basketball player who lost a finger when his wedding ring got caught on the net, and I vaguely recall stories about athletes who were choked by necklaces. Though I suspect that both of these stories are urban legends, I understand the reasoning behind barring jewelry from athletic competition. That said, I'm not sure that Laird was putting herself or anyone else in danger by pole vaulting wearing a friendship bracelet. And if Knowles was really concerned about Laird's safety, he would have pointed out the violation prior to the event.

Safety aside, Laird wearing a friendship bracelet in no way gave South Pasadena a competitive advantage. (And, according to some of the comments from the LA Times blog, several Monrovia athletes were guilty of similar violations. The South Pasadena coach didn't alert officials, presumably because doing so would have been petty.) Thus, I'm declaring South Pasadena the winner.

This story is similar to the story from last fall about the cross country team that was stripped of a county title because one of its runners wore shorts with the wrong color of stitching under his uniform. But that story didn't involve a tattletale opposing coach.

Ideas Worth Ignoring Podcast—Epidsode 5, "Tuesday Night Disco"

2010-05-07T05:22:00.000-07:00

Now available in the iTunes Music Store.

Loyal listeners of the Ideas Worth Ignoring podcast (if there are any) have been waiting two weeks for a new episode. I'm not sure if this episode, "Tuesday Night Disco," is worth the wait. Inspired by a conversation with my manager at Wendy's back in 1996, Tuesday Night Disco is a way to bring people together and make routine the breaking of one's routing.

Click here to subscribe or download individual episodes or make your way into the podcast department of the iTunes Music Store and search for "Scrambies."