Tom McMahon

Why Is Golf Growing In Popularity?

Consider some of these facts from Cybergolf National:

• Golf’s professional tours don't have some of their players in jail every week.
• Golfers don't beat up on each other during a game.
• Professional golfers are compensated in direct proportion to how well they play.
• Golfers don't hold out for more money, or demand new contracts, because of another player's deal.
• Professional golfers don't demand that taxpayers pay for the courses on which they play.
• The PGA Tour raises more money for charity in one year than the National Football League does in two.
• Golfers must adapt to an entirely new playing field every week.

(via Dave Swierczek and Jim Kohli)

Japanese Dice

Japanese Dice

Useful Idiots

From William Rusher's review of Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First, by Mona Charen:

Lenin reputedly referred to these Western intellectual defenders of Communism as "useful idiots," and this is the sobriquet Mona Charen confers on them in the title of her book chronicling their statements and activities. As a reference source, it will be absolutely invaluable to scholars for generations to come. For the rest of us, it provides a sharp reminder of just how stubbornly many liberals resisted this country's efforts to contain, and ultimately defeat, the deadly threat of international Communism.

Her book does not contain, alas, the remarkable statement that constituted my own first introduction to a useful idiot. It blazes in my memory across the 58 years since it was uttered. It was 1946. The Cold War was just beginning, and I was listening to a radio debate on the subject between Clare Boothe Luce and Rev. Harry F. Ward, former chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union and an ornament of New York's Union Theological Seminary (professor of Christian ethics there, I believe), who was already famous as an apologist for Communism. Mrs. Luce made a scathing reference to the Soviet Union's "concentration camps," to which Dr. Ward promptly responded, "Those are not concentration camps. They are personal rehabilitation camps, and they have done those people a world of good!" It is testimony to the impact that piece of idiocy had on me that I remember every word, and am prepared to bet money that my quotation of it is practically verbatim.

The 1984 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

The 1984 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Your host for this event: Pat Sajak. How about that? If you're thinking that Pat seems a little too subdued on "Wheel of Fortune" to pull off something like this, you've got a point. He is pretty lifeless at times, looking straight through the camera to the imaginary Thanksgiving dinner waiting at home. Still, this was Pat Sajak twenty years younger, so he's got a little more pep in his step than we're used to. Pat's job isn't easy, for a number of reasons. He's faced with the challenge of seeming interested in things like "Care Bears" and Kermit the Frog. Not just "passingly interested," mind you -- he's got to treat the parade events like Christ's second coming, and he's got to do it every five minutes for three hours straight.

Posh Mausoleums: Boomers Still Living The High Life In Death

From JS Online:

The finest granite. Stunning stained-glass art windows. Fine architectural detail. Air-conditioned in the summer. Heated in the winter. Plush furniture and weekly delivery of fresh flowers. It's heaven on Earth. Too bad you have to die to move in.

How To Light Your Charcoal Grill And Be Ready To Cook In Just 3 Seconds

From some engineers at Purdue: Lighting a grill with 3 gallons of liquid oxygen. Started with 60 lbs of charcoal; burnt up 40 lbs of it in 3 seconds. Result is a grill ready to cook in about 3 seconds, and all the old grease, etc burned off. Don't try this at home. (via Larry Long, Pam Moen, Anne Sawyer-Glover, and Jim Kohli)

Spongebob Squarepants 5 in 1 Video Game System

Spongebob Squarepants 5 in 1 Video Game System

The Assault on Terri Schiavo Continues

From The Weekly Standard:

Michael Schiavo won his fight to have his wife killed by dehydration. Now he won't even allow her parents to sit by her side.

Michael's behavior toward Terri has been utterly despicable for the last decade. After she collapsed in 1990, he sued for medical malpractice on her behalf. During the trial, he presented himself to the jury as a dedicated and loving husband--even though he had been romancing other women since shortly after the time of Terri's collapse and brain injury. He told the jury he would care for Terri for the rest of her life, which an expert testified would be a normal life span, and that as part of this loving devotion, he would provide her with regular medical tests and appropriate rehabilitation with the money the jury awarded.

Terri received about $750,000 in early 1993, and Michael about $300,000 for loss of her companionship. As soon as Terri's money was safely in the bank, Michael put her two cats to sleep. He then melted down her wedding and engagement rings to make a ring for himself. Medical records indicate that Terri went for years without having her teeth cleaned, as an apparent consequence of which, she recently had five teeth extracted.

And, he wanted his wife dead. Within a year of the verdict, he refused to allow doctors to treat her with antibiotics to treat a serious infection, claiming that Terri would not want to live in her disabled condition--a point he somehow forgot to mention to the malpractice jury. Not coincidentally, had she died, he would have inherited her $700,000. Terri's parents sued to mandate care, and their relationship with Michael was forever poisoned.

Thereafter, medical records indicate, Terri had none of the medical testing Michael told the malpractice jury he would provide her, and apparently she received no rehabilitation. Indeed, nurses who cared for her in the mid-1990s filed sworn affidavits claiming that Michael repeatedly refused doctor recommendations that Terri be provided therapy.

Liar

(via Denise Petrovich)

The 10 Greatest Change Agents In Popular Culture Over The Past 50 Years

A list compiled by Allan Barra. Number 5 on the list is Buddy Holly:

Well, yes, Elvis, of course, but American boys couldn’t realistically hope to grow up to be Elvis, whereas any horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing geek with a couple of friends and a garage to practice in might, in theory, become the next Buddy Holly. Holly and the Crickets were the first threeand four-piece rock band to go into a studio and record as such, and with the possible exception of Chuck Berry, who approached rock ’n’ roll from the other end of the color spectrum, no one did as much to fuse black blues and raucous white country music into the monster that would become rock ’n’ roll. Holly’s death in a plane crash in 1959 set the standard for rock-star denouements and inspired Don McLean’s “American Pie.” About a year after Holly’s death, some English kids in Liverpool got together and began looking for a name for their band that would remind people of the Crickets.