Please Fix Boxing!!!

I don’t mean that kind of “fix”. I mean “fix” as in “repair”.

I don’t watch boxing nearly as much as I used to. At one time I would have considered myself a fan. For the last seven years or so I’ve sort of ditched boxing for the UFC. The fights are more active and the outcomes less predictable. Boxing is losing lots of fans to MMA fighting.

Just in case, I TiVo’d Saturday’s Jermain Taylor / Kelly Pavlik fight and watched it tonight. Wow. The other fight HBO showed was between Andre Berto and David Estrada. I won’t give away the results to either, but if you can catch the replay they are both great, entertaining fights. It reminded me how great boxing can be.

Anyway, I think I know how to fix boxing. Some promoter besides Don King should offer former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell a few million dollars to fight a big name boxer. He’ll take it, partly because he lost his last two fights and partly because the UFC doesn’t pay anywhere near that kind of money.

How does it benefit boxing? He’ll lose. Badly

Liddell is considered one of the UFC’s hardest punchers, but watch the two fights I’m talking about here if you really want to see some guys hit hard. Throw in the fact that his pure boxing skills are nowhere near those top notch professional boxers, and it hardly seems fair.

Boxing will gain a lot of credibility with younger fans, and the buy rate for the pay per view would be tremendous. I’d buy it.

New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

Moment of Clarity for Striking Workers?

Via WBIR:

Both striking and non-striking workers will vote whether to oust the union. Striking workers have been off the job and on picket lines for seven months.

Hopefully enough of them have woken up and realized who is actually oppressing them. Hint: it is usually the person who is taking money from your paycheck, not the person who is signing it.

Student Loans–Education by Doctor Evil

Student loans–yet another thing I’m against. I’m not against the fact that they exist, mind you, I just don’t think think they are a good idea for me or my posterity. You can do what you want, but Katherine Coble and several other people agree with me.

I still think that the student loans I took out were some of the biggest financial mistakes of my life.

And from the comments, Jim Voorhies adds this.

Being able to do what you love is the goal all of us should have. Knowing what that was at a time early enough in life to be able to mesh it with your degree is remarkable.

It’s totally contrary to the norm, but I think many 18 year olds would be a lot better off if they didn’t go to college right away. They’d be better off getting a job doing something, getting their partying out of the way, learning what it means to have real bills, saving some money (for school) and figuring out what they really want to do. It would have been good for me.

Maybe a good rule of thumb is to have two of these three things in place:
1) Absolutely sure of what you want to study
2) Can pay for it without loans
3) Have done enough real labor to know you don’t want to wash dishes for the rest of your life.

Cigarette Smuggling Surveillance Starts in Tennessee

From the KNS:

Starting today, state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars.

I can go so many different directions with this one…

Do I make the comparison to the Dukes of Hazzard with revenuers, crooked local authorities, and free wheeling Robin Hood types whose lawless behavior we cheer on?

Do I draw a conclusion that more state authorities in Tennessee are trying to get into pulling people over so they can take advantage of the fringe benefits that have become associated with traffic stops in our state? (That one is for all of you who voted for it in the last poll).

Or do I say nothing, since I don’t consume cigarettes?

First they came for the smokers, and I didn’t speak up because I don’t smoke.

Then they came for the Sunday beer sales, and I didn’t speak up because I’m usually too hung over to drink on Sundays.

And when they came for the people who play home poker games, there was no one who was interested in playing poker on Sundays, the only day I have time to play, left to speak for me.

Free of DRM is Good Too

I’ve been talking about free here a lot over the past few days. Well, Amazon has launched an mp3 download site to compete with iTunes. Seems impossible, right? Not if you consider that Amazon’s downloads are DRM free. DRM is the code in songs downloaded through iTunes that allow you to only play the song through iTunes or on your iPod. Songs downloaded from Amazon can be played on any player.

I checked out their catalog last night, and it is pretty extensive. Not only that, but you can also download complete albums there at a discount, not to mention the fact that you don’t have to pay shipping and get the song immediately.

You’ll need to install Amazon’s download manager, but it’s quick and easy!

A Question For Newspapers and Their Readers

Why are stock quotes still printed in newspapers? Are newspapers paid to print them, or do they print them only because they have always printed them? Is it just filler information?

It seems to me that if you are relying on a newspaper to tell you what happened in the markets the day before, you probably aren’t making as much money as you could/should. It’s just raw data. There isn’t any analysis or there, just numbers

I’m sure there is a really good reason that I’m overlooking. I just don’t get it.

No Apartment For You!

A San Antonio man feels he’s been discriminated against because an apartment complex didn’t want to rent to him based on the fact that he has lots of tattoos.

Frankel e-mailed us a statement saying his apartment complexes do, in fact, “reject prospective tenants who have… tattoos exposed on the neck, head, hands and wrists, or large tattoos that cover over 40% of the lower or upper arm.”

Frankel says, “We do not discriminate. The above applies to persons of any race, color, gender, etc.”

I have to side with the apartment complex on this one. Dude, you CHOSE to get ink up and down your arm. That was a market decision. If you don’t like it, go buy your own apartment building and require all applicants to have a sleeve of tattoos before you’ll rent to them.

Think that will work? Probably not–the market won’t support it.

If they were denying people based on the fact that they have large birthmarks it would be different, but c’mon.

The Carrillos were also upset that the manager refused to refund their full $70 application fee. But mostly, they feel the policy is discriminatory.

So give them their money back and let them dry their tears with the check.

Who Owns Free Speech?

Ignore the distractions of specific instances, and ask yourself this question based completely on principle–who in the world should be entitled to speak freely?

To me, freedom of speech and expression is a God-given (natural) right of all people. Whether or not a government chooses to recognize and respect this right is a completely different story, but fortunately ours does. Based on my limited knowledge of Constitutional law and history, I have to believe that was the intention of the Founders. The argument that freedom of speech is only protected for citizens and residents of this country is hollow–we wouldn’t deny that right to a Canadian or a Brit would we?

If we can justify denying speech to a person who is standing on U.S. soil based solely on the laws and policies of their home country, wouldn’t it be completely reasonable to expect that we would be protected by law to speak freely in any other country just because we come from a country that allows it.

So who owns freedom of speech? Is it a right every person is entitled to, or is it granted by country of origin? Something to think about.

Some People Are Never Satisfied

I was listening to Sean Hannity on my way home from work today. I know, I know. But I had such a great day at work that I needed to even it out. I couldn’t think of anything more irritating than Hannity that could accomplish my goal in a 23 minute commute.

Of course, he was talking about Ahmadinejad at Columbia, and of course, he didn’t give Lee Bollinger any credit for taking Ahmadinejad to task. Instead, he went on an incoherent rant the point of which (I think) was that the only reason Bollinger went after Ahmadinejad was that he’d received so much bad publicity and pressure.

Loyal readers of this blog can probably guess that I don’t agree with liberal academia about very much. But I hope that, in general, I call an ace and ace and a spade a shovel. Bollinger did exactly what he should have done in this situation. He took the opportunity to ask some very tough questions of Ahmadinejad that he looked like a fool for dodging and would have exposed himself as a turd if he’d answered.

Hannity’s stance on what happened is about as stupid as he is. This was a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation”. Nothing could have made him happy. I for one am glad these questions were directly asked, and I don’t care if it was only in order to spite some neo-cons, though I doubt that was the actual motivation.

In fact, spite is one of the best reasons I can think of.