Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Quote of the Day/Week- John Elway




In honor of the upcoming Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and New York Giants, a rematch of a game which lead to the Giants stopping the Patriots from having the first perfect season since the Miami Dolphins accomplished the feat in the 1970s, we are quoting Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks.

Initially, John Elway and the Denver Broncos lost the Super Bowl in 1990 to Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers. But, Elway came up victorious over the Green Bay Packers and the Atlanta Falcons to win two Super Bowls. Elway retired after the Broncos' Super Bowl win over the Falcons.

Today, Elway is the executive vice president of the Broncos, and the current quarterback Tim Tebow has been a source of controversy as he has made a warrior-stance prayer which has become known as 'tebowing.' As Matt Taibbi pointed out in a column for "Rolling Stone," there was an ironic moment during the NFL season when a defensive player from another team sacked Tebow and made the same warrior-stance prayer, thus leading to term "tebowing Tebow."

Here is the quote from Elway, who played college football for Stanford:

"I don't know if I like being the sentimental favorite."

Quote of the Day/Week- Vaclav Havel




Today, we conclude our month-long series of quotes from famous people who died in 2011 with a quip from Vaclav Havel, a Czech playwright/essayist who also became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic when they formally divorced from Slovakia. Havel was also a dedicated opposition human rights leader when Czechoslovakia was under communism.

There are seemingly few writers who go on to become political leaders. The only one we can think of at the moment is the late Bulent Ecevit, a poet and journalist who became prime minister and president of Turkey. Ecevit is most-known for being the Turkish prime minister in 1974 when Turkey and Greece fought a brief, but ugly war in Cyprus.

Havel died on Dec. 18, 2011, at the age of 75; here is his quote:

"Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world around you."

Monday, January 30, 2012

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Handsome Dan




Greetings to everyone in Moscow, Russia, where we are seemingly and surprisingly popular!

Today, we feature the Yale Bulldogs mascot Handsome Dan in our semi-weekly "Silly Photo to Fill Space" series. Yale University was the first university to have a mascot in the 1890s, and the current Handsome Dan, born in 2007 in Johnson City, Tenn.- of all places, is the 17th in the line.

On our sister blog, we dedicated an entry to John Harvard, who is the mascot for the Crimson.

Alas, this was not a very good weekend for Bulldogs fans as the school saw athletic losses in several sports. We mentioned the losses to rival Harvard (65-35), men's hockey (4-3) and women's hockey (8-0) on our sister blog.

But, the men's hockey team won a home game against Dartmouth 5-4 on a goal from Kenny Agostino, a junior from Flanders, NJ, that was scored with 38 seconds on the clock. We imagine the Big Green was not pleased to get on the bus back to New Hampshire afterwards.

Yale's women's hockey team had a particular rough weekend on the ice, but goalie Genny Lodgies, a junior from Canada, had 46 saves against Dartmouth's women's hockey team. The Big Green won that game over the Bulldogs by a 6-0 score.

Like the men's hockey team, Yale's men's basketball team got a victory by also beating Dartmouth by a 62-52 in a game that was played on Yale's home court in new Haven, Conn. Reggie Willhite scored 16 points for the Bulldogs in the win.

Unlike Harvard, Yale has a women's gymnastics team and they went to Philadelphia to face Penn-U over the weekend. The Bulldogs' gym team fell short as the Quakers won the meet 191.225-188.35 margin.

But, junior Tara Feld from Buffalo Grove, Ill., had strong vault and floor scores (both were 9.75) as well as a stellar score on beam (9.275).

Yale's gym team also has two sophomore sisters from Singapore in Nicole and Tabitha Tay. We think they might be twins, but we could not confirm that.

Quote of the Day/Week- Claude Monet




Greetings to everyone in Dubai, where we understand the local economy is very, very good.

Today we quote the great French artist Claude Monet (1840-1926). Five of Monet's lily masterpieces will be on display this summer at an exhibition at Tate Liverpool, which is an art museum on Tate Street, in Liverpool, England (United Kingdom). This might be our first mention of Liverpool which not about soccer or The Beatles.

Here is Monet's quip, which sounds rather negative:

"My life has been nothing but a failure."

Quote of the Day/Week_ Alexander Fleming



Hello to everyone in Nassau, The Bahamas. Hope everyone is enjoying their Coco Loco (one has to have been on a cruise ship to get the joke; well, we hope).


Today, we have a quip from the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) who is credited with inventing Penicillin. Fleming won the Nobel Prize for science in 1945.

All this month, we have been quoting famous scientists; here is the quote from Fleming:

"One sometimes finds what one is not looking for."

Sunday, January 22, 2012

In the News_ American Postage Stamps Increase




On Monday, domestic postage stamp rates for letters go up here in the United States. So, if you want to send a congratulations card to Newt Gingrich for winning yesterday's South Carolina Republican Primary, you are already too late. Of course, those of you who know us well, realize we will not be among those sending the former House Speaker greeting cards anytime soon.

The Humphrey Bogart stamp (1997) shown here was part of a Legends of Hollywood series, which also included a Marilyn Monroe stamp.

SIDEBAR: Kudos to the nationally ranked men's basketball team from Harvard as they beat Dartmouth yesterday on the road in Hanover, NH, by a 54-38 score. But, interestingly enough, the school's Athlete of the Week is Haley Mendez, who plays women's squash?!

Also our congrats go out to the North Carolina State women's gymnastics team as earlier in the week sophomore Stephanie Ouellette was named EAGL Conference Gymnast of the Week. The Wolfpack also received honors for junior Rachel Fincham who was named EAGL Specialist of the Week, and freshman Lane Jarred who was named EAGL Rookie of the Week.

Over the weekend, the Wolfpack continued their success with a road victory over the University of Illinois-Chicago, which is, of course, located in the Windy City.

Friday, January 20, 2012

PSA_ No Newts in 2012




It is possible that at this very moment as we are blogging to you live from the Salt Lake City Library on 210 East 400 South Street (not really where we are at, but I hear it is one of the best public libraries in the country), that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is stumping at the Golden Corral in Rock Hill, SC, where Fred Thompson stumped four years ago (this part is actually true).

Hopefully, like Thompson, Gingrich will be defeated by a more moderate Republican. Though it seems like current front runner Mitt Romney may be too mainstream for the gunsGodncountry folks in the Palmetto State.

In the Sunday, Jan. 15th edition of the comic strip "Doonesbury," Garry Trudeau cited the following actual quote from Gingrich in reference to the Democratic Party: "As great a threat to America as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union."

At age 69, Gingrich is the second oldest candidate in the field of what is now four candidates behind Ron Paul, who is 76. Interestingly enough, Gingrich, who became House Speaker in 1994 when he was in the House of Representatives as a Congressman from Georgia, was also a House Minority Whip as was former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is also out of favor with 99.9 percent of us on the center-left.

Today's "Washington Post" reports that in response to a comment from a man who is or was a Marine at a rally in Florence, SC, which said that 'I would like to see someone bloody Obama's nose,' Gingrich had the gumption and indignity to respond something to effect of: 'I don't want to just bloody his nose, I want to knock him out.'

In the current issue of the liberal magazine "The Nation," Ben Adler, who is covering the GOP race for the publication from places like Charleston, SC, on the campaign trial, said that the pit-bull tactics of Gingrich actually seemed to be helping him appeal to arch conservatives who might well want to hit people in my political spectrum over the head with a bowling trophy (my words, not Adler's).

Stephen Colbert, who is originally from Charleston, has even gotten into the Republican race discussion as the late night tv political comic told residents from his native state to vote for Herman Cain to throw a curve-ball into the race.

South Carolina allows Democrats and independents to vote in the Republican primary. Conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh pulled a similar stunt four years ago when he encouraged right wingers to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Indiana primary to help prevent Barack Obama from winning the nomination; an effort which 'worked' in the short run, but in the end, Obama still won the nomination and if, of course, now president.

The South Carolina Democratic Party has actually told its members not to vote in the Republican primary as by doing so they will get a steady stream of campaign literature and phone calls for Republican candidates.

As for the reason, why we are highly opposed to Gingrich getting the GOP nomination, it is just mere political differences, but the venom and vitriol that he would bring into the Oval Office.

Many people from both parties as well as independents complain that it is agonizing to watch Democrats and Republicans not get anything accomplished on The Hill. Though no one person is to blame entirely, the conquer and divide mentality that Gingrich brought to the forefront of American politics when he became House Speaker in 1994 still remains in effect to this very day.