- I reserve some space a couple times a week for the latest installment of my “Illnesses on Cruise Ships” update. I came alarmingly close to this phenomenon during a recent visit to Miami Beach, twice passing down the MacArthur Causeway, right by “Cruise Ship Row.” However, there was still a decent amount of water between these disease carrying vessels and me, so I didn’t feel that much in danger. But this week’s illness on a cruise ship comes to us from Port Everglades, Fla., where more than 100 passengers aboard the Holland America cruise ship Volendam came down with flu-like symptoms. What would actually be noteworthy at this point would be if a cruise ship didn’t have passengers who became ill while on board. I know giant cruise ships got off to a rough start with that whole Titanic thing, but over the course of nearly a century, isn't there some chance that a cruise could begin and end without some sort of major or minor disaster? Just once?
- Scientists are really good about pointing out the obvious and spending millions of dollars researching those blatantly obvious things that everyone already knows. Y’know, like McDonald’s food makes you fat if you eat a lot of it, people that exercise tend to live longer, that type of thing. Now, a group of climate scientists have declared that they are 90 percent certain that 1) global warming is occurring (shocker), 2) it’s a manmade phenomenon (double shocker) and 3) it likely can’t be stopped (I’m floored.). The 20-page reports says that natural causes alone cannot account for the changes in climate and that the polar ice caps are still in grave danger, all things we’ve heard over and over. The question is whether scientists who want to waste money researching topics that have already been researched ad nauseam and beaten right into the ground just outright lie when they write their funding applications, or if they openly admit they’re going to throw away millions doing research that’s already been done over and over. I look forward to future studies informing us that the sky is blue, grass is green, water is wet and Rosie O’Donnell is fat.
- On the theme of beating a dead horse…..yet another person is telling our Idiot in Chief that the proposed troop surge of 21,500 in Iraq is the wrong move. No less than the outgoing commander in Iraq, Gen. Paul Casey, a man who has actually been on the ground in the war zone and knows what is going on there firsthand, told Congress that W.’s plan will send many thousands more troops into Iraq than are actually necessary. Lost in the process was the fact that no additional troops would be needed if the proper plan was implemented (a total U.S. withdrawal). But nobody who talks to Congress seems to express the sentiment that W. is right in wanting to pour 21,500 more men and women from our military into Iraq. Republicans think it’s a bad idea, so do Democrats. Men hate the plan, women hate the plan. People inside the military disagree with the troop surge, people outside the military feel the same way. The tribes living in the bushes in Africa haven't weighed in yet, but if asked, I’m sure they would feel the same way. Had Punxatawney Phil been asked for his opinion on the plan when they yanked the poor guy out of his hole in the ground at Groundhog Day, I am sure that he too would have come down squarely against it. Again, the question to raise: is W. stupid, stubborn, blind or just ignorant? The likely answer: all of the above.
- Few things in sports are more hypocritical than all-star games, namely the selection process for these games and the laughable uproar it inevitably produces. In all of the four major sports (baseball, football, basketball and hockey), the all-star games have become an increasingly irrelevant entity, an albatross that slows down the regular season or is a forgotten afterthought to it in the case of the NFL. Yet despite the fact that the players themselves treat the game with a general attitude of indifference, they and their coaches pretend to be really pissed off when they aren't selected. They whine and complain about being disrespected and overlooked, but yet a massive percentage of the guys who are selected inevitably pull out of the game, citing fatigue, injuries or personal reasons. Being there isn't important to them; being picked is. They don’t want the burden of traveling to, preparing for and playing in the game, with the potential risk of injury in an exhibition game looming overhead. It’s the age-old notion that we see in little kids all the time; they don’t necessarily want something, they just want to be offered it and thus given a show of respect. How absurd and hypocritical is it to b*tch about not getting picked for something when the only reason you want to be picked is so people will recognize how great you are (and of course, you get the contract bonus most players receive for an all-star selection)? The NBA just had its All-Star Game selections, and of course, the “deserving” players left off are throwing a fit, guys like Carmelo Anthony. Maybe, though, ‘Melo, if you hadn't gotten a 15-game suspension for sucker punching another player in a game, you wouldn’t have been left out of the game. Yet another reason why all-star games suck and why most people, even fans of a particular sport, ignore them.
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