Nickel Creek

From the ever-expanding youtube archives, three live videos of some great songs.

"When you come back down" [complete with fans yelling at the beginning]:



"The Fox" with "The Weight" by The Band in the middle:



"Toxic" by Brittany Federline:

More fun with youtube

Go to youtube and type in "kishore." This gem, "Kishore dance clip 1," is your third option. Enjoy.

Mikey does like it

So he did do it, and then he lied about it to his team, prosecutors, and the NFL Commissioner. Uh oh. Check it out here [and every other news site].

And here's a good clip on a past Michael Vick issue.

McLovin it

Interesting article

First off let me say that I love dogs. Growing up we had at least one dog, sometimes two, and I've had three dogs while living here in Cville [Bailey 1, Bailey 2.0, and now Hazel]. Let me also state that I like deer. Not necessarily the deer that leave raisonettes in our backyard for the dogs to roll in and snack on, but the deer that I've hunted. That's right, I hunt[ed] deer. This will be the theme of an upcoming post, but let's get back to the topic at hand.

Michael Vick is alleged to have organized and participated in dog fighting at one of his properties. The public outcry, mostly organized by PETA and other animal rights groups, has been loud and constant against him. There's talk of banning Vick for 1 year from the NFL and cries that he be banned permanently from playing in the NFL. Not for rape, or murder, or buying crack, but for dog fighting.

While it's terrible if he did what he's accused of, it is utterly ridiculous that there is this level of outcry against brutality towards animals when there has not been the same level of emotion concerning violence against people. Take, for an obvious example, the level of outrage following the charges of rape of a 20 yr old placed against Kobe Bryant; while he was booed and picketed, it wasn't to the same degree as Vick has been getting. Not saying that Kobe did it, or that Vick did it, but rather that public reaction against the two disparate charges didn't make sense in light of what they were accused of.

All of this is a lead into a well-written article over at yahoo on this topic written by Michael Silver. It's not the most damning article, but it does begin to put some of this into perspective. You can find the link here.

Editorial free speech

I try to stay as au courant as possible with current trends in America. Because I am lazy, I do this mostly through reading the op-ed pieces that I can find on-line; one of usual haunts is Yahoo!'s section [located here] b/c of the large number of writers that it includes.

Today this article jumped out at me for being overly dramatic and a bit offensive. Entitled "GOP Declares Open War on Brown People," the author [Pachacutec ?] takes a very narrow and biased look at how the Republican candidates are beginning to discuss illegal immigration. Some of the phrases and ideas that I found offensive included the title [the party hasn't declared war on anyone, and "Brown People" is an offensive term when what is really at the core is illegal immigrants, not all Hispanics], the phrases "the White House's announcement last Friday that they will cooperate with larger efforts to rally the bigoted GOP base" and "the decades-old pancake makeup covering the hateful racist core of the GOP has flaked so hard it's falling right off, and we're about to witness quite the Klan rally for the soul of the Republican Party heading into 2008."
I also disliked the last sentence of the article, which was simply "Jackboots de rigeur." This is of course a reference to Nazi fascists, who wore the boots while persecuting and murdering millions during WW2. The author is trying to create a relationship between Nazi Germany and the Republican party, who is "against brown people."

I completely disagree with the article and find it intellectually dishonest to equate being against illegal immigration with being against immigrants or Hispanics. Are there people who are against illegal immigrants who are also hateful bigots, or who hate Hispanics, or who want to "close the borders" to all immigrants? Absolutely. But just because someone is against illegal immigrants does not mean that he or she hates "brown people" or has "declared war" against them. That's just taking it too far.

Articles like this only inflame what is already a volatile and controversial topic. This issue deserves better and more responsible debate from both sides instead of a crude attempt at gaining support by outright lying and fear-mongering.

Beckham scores, Ronaldo follows Zidane

Ronaldo, playing for ManU but more importantly playing on my fantasy team, did something really, really dumb Tuesday night. Tuesday he got a red card late in the game, which keeps him from playing this weekend and also earned an amazing -2 pts for the fantasy cause. ManU finds itself in somewhat unfamiliar territory, with 2 ties and 2pts earned after 2 games. Everton finds itself tied in first place with Chelsea and Man City, while there are five teams ranked at the bottom with 0 pts after 2 games.

In MLS action, David Beckham started his first game and scored his first MLS goal. He scored in the 1st half with a free kick that he - wait for it....bent- over a wall and into the side netting. Here is a link to video footage of the goal. Two highlights of the video are Posh aka "Victoria" Beckham's enthusiastic celebration and the utter frustration of the keeper [was he surprised that it could happen to him?].