bhoak's Xanga

Pitino

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:21:57 GMT

I liked Rick Pitino. Great coach, great style of play, motivational leader.

But apparently not a good role model. I would have sent my son to play for him. Not anymore, not on the heels of the revelation that he got drunk one night at a restaurant six years ago and had sex with a woman he had just met. She later became pregnant and he gave her money for “health insurance” — when he knew she was going to get an abortion.

This is not a man I want my son to be around. He says things like, “If you tell the truth, the problem becomes part of the past. If you lie, it become part of your future.” Which is true, as far as it goes, but the only reason he’s talking about it now is that he got caught. Otherwise, he would have continued lying about it.

The president of U of L and the AD should send him packing. Immediately. There is a clause in Pitino’s contract that allows him to be fired for moral depravity. Um, yeah, this qualifies.

But they’ll stand behind him, say they support him and we need to move forward, blah blah blah. Why? Because he wins games. If his record last year had been 5-31 instead of 31-5, he’d already be gone.

One other note. Where does he find his assistants and how much are they paid? One of them stuck around (to keep watch?) while Pitino was having sex after hours in the restaurant. Another let Pitino and Karen Sypher meet secretly at his condo so Pitino could pay her off. And then he later married her. Yeah.

Pitino was a great coach at Kentucky. He has done well at U of L. He’d have been on the list of my favorite coaches. And sure, he can find forgiveness. But he doesn’t need to be coaching young men.

The honorable way out would have been to meet with his team, tell them what he’d done, ask their forgiveness, resign and go home to work full-time on repairing his marriage and family. He could afford it.

I Wrote a Book

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:04:46 GMT

So I should probably let you know that I wrote a book. Two, in fact. Here they are:

Here's how it happened: sometime in the fall of 2007 (I think), I was looking for freelance writing jobs online. Happened across an ad for someone to write biographies of biblical figures. Figured I could do that -- turns out, they agreed, and the books were published a couple of months ago.

The two books are part of a series called "Money at Its Best: Millionaires of the Old Testament." They're done by an educational publishing company in Pennsylvania called Mason Crest Publishers. Here's what their website says about the series:

The purpose of the series Money at its Best: Millionaires of the Bible is to examine the lives of key figures from Biblical history, showing how these people blended their faith in God with their wealth or privileged positions in order to make a difference in the lives of others. Each book in this series weaves stories from the Bible with legends (for) a plausible account of the subject's life. These portraits are fleshed out by 35 to 60 full-color illustrations, including pictures of or folk tales, other scriptural sources, and modern archaeological research to create artifacts and paintings of religious scenes from Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, and other great artists. Each book includes resources for further study, as well as a detailed index.

The complete series includes 12 books -- other figures include Abraham and Sarah, Daniel, David, Esther, Job, Moses, Noah, Sampson and Solomon. They're aimed at middle school-level readers and higher.

Each book took two or three months to write. Lots of research, lots of late nights, lots of patience from my wife. Learned a ton. Loved being immersed in the lives of God's chosen people, who weren't all they were cracked up to be -- just like us. Stumbled upon a cool name for my blog (the story can come later). Loved doing it, can't wait to do it again.

The publishers did a great job making the books look good. Lots of cool design and graphics.

So there ya go. A couple of books with my name on them. Who'd a thunk it? Not that I have any particular ability on my own -- as the song says, "Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song."

If you want to see them on a real website to make sure I'm not just pulling your leg, check here and here. They're also on Amazon -- here and here. There's no danger of them cracking the best seller list. Jacob has no ranking, while Joseph is rocketing up Amazon's list at #8,059,841.

--End of self-promotion. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.--

How to Make Golf Exciting

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:54:08 GMT

With the U.S. Open starting today at Bethpage Black in New York, here's how you make golf more exciting on television: put basketball announcers in the broadcast booth. This is hilarious. Enjoy:

Pulitzer Prizes

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:18:37 GMT

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1917 that the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded. Here are some things you might not have known about Pulitzer Prizes:

They're announced each year in April and then awarded at Columbia University in May, during a luncheon at the campus library.
Each Pulitzer Prize winner receives a $10,000 award and a certificate, except in the Public Service category, where the winner is given a gold medal. Only a newspaper, not an individual, can receive the Public Service prize for journalism.
There are 21 Pulitzer categories. Two-thirds of the prizes (14) revolve around journalism. There are six for letters and drama (fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry, and general nonfiction), and there is one prize given for music.
The Pulitzer Prize for fiction used to be called the Pulitzer Prize for the novel. The name was changed in 1948.
Poet Robert Frost won the Pulitzer Prize four times. Playwright Eugene O'Neill also won four Pulitzer Prizes.
The Pulitzer Prize is a very American award. Only U.S. citizens are eligible for the non-journalism Prizes. The exception to this is in the history category: a non-American can win the Pulitzer Prize if he or she wrote a book about the history of the United States. Foreign journalists can win Pulitzers if they write for a newspaper published in the United States.
The New York Times holds the all-time record for number of Pulitzer Prizes received. The paper has collectively won 101 Pulitzers.
Newspapers generally nominate themselves for Pulitzer Prizes. The fee for each entry is $50, and the material that the newspaper wants the prize board to consider must be accompanied by an entry form. An entry has to fit into one of the 21 categories; it can't be submitted on the grounds that it is just generally good. To be eligible, a paper must be published in the U.S. at least weekly.
In 2009, for the first time, online-only news organizations were eligible for the Pulitzer. Before, it was restricted to print publications.
Decisions about prize winners are made by the Pulitzer board in secret. Afterward, the board does not publicly discuss or defend its decisions.

Sowell on Sotomayor

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:57:47 GMT

Thomas Sowell has been writing about the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. He has an incisive way of cutting through the clutter and media spin and making you think about the heart of the issues. A couple of quotes:

It is one of the signs of our times that so many in the media are focusing on the life story of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States.

You might think that this was some kind of popularity contest, instead of a weighty decision about someone whose impact on the fundamental law of the nation will extend for decades after Barack Obama has come and gone.

Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think.

If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find-- even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?

And this:

The clever people in the media and elsewhere are saying that "inevitably" one's background influences how one feels about issues. Even if that were true, judges are not supposed to decide cases based on their personal feelings.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that he "loathed" many of the people in whose favor he voted on the Supreme Court. Obviously, he had feelings. But he also had the good sense and integrity to rule on the basis of the law, not his feelings.

Laws are made for the benefit of the citizens, not for the self-indulgences of judges. Making excuses for such self-indulgences and calling them "inevitable" is part of the cleverness that has eroded the rule of law and undermined respect for the law …

It would be considered a disgrace if an umpire in a baseball game let his "empathy" determine whether a pitch was called a ball or strike. Surely we should accept nothing less from a judge.

You can read all of his columns here. Highly recommended.

Twitter and Worship

Fri, 29 May 2009 14:52:31 GMT

As the popularity of Twitter explodes, people are using it everywhere -- including during worship, often with the encouragement of their pastors.

While Twitter is cool (you can follow me here) when used correctly, that doesn't include during worship. I can't explain it any better than Josh Harris did, with agreement and expansion from John Piper. From Piper:

... we think you should use Twitter before and after corporate worship to say what you take in and take out. But when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God.
Don’t tweet while having sex. Don’t tweet while praying with the dying. Don’t tweet when your wife is telling you about the kids. There’s a season for everything. Multitasking only makes sense when none of the tasks requires heart-engaged, loving attention.
... let’s pursue God with all our might and focus during corporate worship. Then tell the world what God did. If it’s God’s power, it can wait an hour.

Amen.

Jesus According to Dan Brown

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:37:21 GMT

Angels and Demons, in movie theaters now, is the latest movie based on Dan Brown's books. The first, of course, was The DaVinci Code, which was, to put it mildly, fairly popular.

Angels and Demons is in the same vein as the first book, focusing on a dark secret within the Catholic church that symbologist Robert Langdon desperately tries to uncover as he races through a series of thrilling events. It's captivating reading, sweeping you up into fascinating history and hidden conspiracies.

It's also seductively wrong, as Ross Douthat writes in today's New York Times. He nails the problem with the book and with religion today:

In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

Yep. Religion is great, as long as it doesn't have to do with sin and blood and righteousness. The same do-it-yourself mentality that works well on home repairs isn't so effective when it comes to your eternal fate:

polls ... reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.

Here's the crux of the issue -- a 21st century Jesus who fits neatly into your life, or the Jesus portrayed in the Gospel accounts:

These are Dan Brown’s kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.
But the success of this message — which also shows up in the work of Brown’s many thriller-writing imitators — can’t be separated from its dishonesty. The “secret” history of Christendom that unspools in “The Da Vinci Code” is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling — they’re far, far weirder than that — nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account.

Money quote:

The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he’s the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.
For millions of readers, Brown’s novels have helped smooth over the tension between ancient Christianity and modern American faith. But the tension endures. You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both.

Moral Hazard

Thu, 14 May 2009 06:03:32 GMT

Malcom Gladwell, relating sports, the economy and health insurance

I think, for example, that the idea of ranking draft picks in reverse order of finish -- as much as it sounds "fair" -- does untold damage to the game. You simply cannot have a system that rewards anyone, ever, for losing. Economists worry about this all the time, when they talk about "moral hazard." Moral hazard is the idea that if you insure someone against risk, you will make risky behavior more likely. So if you always bail out the banks when they take absurd risks and do stupid things, they are going to keep on taking absurd risks and doing stupid things. Bailouts create moral hazard. Moral hazard is also why your health insurance has a co-pay. If your insurer paid for everything, the theory goes, it would encourage you to go to the doctor when you really don't need to. No economist in his right mind would ever endorse the football and basketball drafts the way they are structured now. They are a moral hazard in spades.

College, Anyone?

Mon, 04 May 2009 18:54:55 GMT

Outstanding use of a college education:

Their parents must be so proud.

Stand by Me

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:53:29 GMT

A little fun on Friday — an around-the-world version of Stand by Me, done by street performers and musicians adding their parts as it travels across several continents. Part of the “Playing for Change: Peace Through Music” project. Good stuff. Enjoy.

(It’s cooler if you go full-screen. Hit play and then click on the green box next to the bottom right corner.)

(You can watch more songs here.)