Photographers know to always be ready. The best shot may be the one you aren’t expecting. The Balloons Over Bend festival was in town this weekend. I got up early this morning and headed down to Riverbend Park to hopefully get some nice shots of hot air balloons, which I have never photographed before. I found a spot up on
Read moreWorld Cup 2014 was a great one. But what does the future hold? Copa Mundial 2014 was a wonderful tournament, despite the bad officiating, diving and cannibalism. We saw the emergence of new stars (what do you mean it’s pronounced “Hahm-es”?), brilliant swan songs by old stars (here’s to you Miroslav Klose), dramatic overachieving (hail Ticos!), epic flame-outs (remember back in
Read moreWorld Cup 2014 is in the books. Congratulations to Die Mannschaft, and also to Argentina for a fantastic effort. It was a tournament for the ages. 11 stray observations, in no particular order. 1: While the political and economic controversies surrounding this tournament were driven by very real concerns, the tournament itself was marvelous. I’m not one who can easily compartmentalize when
Read moreI have now been a resident of Bend, OR for seven days. Riverbend Park, which is adjacent to my office. 1: My apartment is nothing special. It’s okay – not terribly new, but in decent condition. It’s 150 sq. feet bigger than my last place, which is great, and has a huge ass closet. Which is good because the storage
Read moreMuch respect to King James. Wade is done and he’s taking Miami down with him. Bosh lashes himself to the mast of a sinking ship. And Melo is who we thought he was. Discuss. The major elements of this year’s NBA free agency season – LeBron, Carmelo, Bosh and Wade – are now settled, or soon will be. A few
Read moreDick Monfort slips up and inadvertently offers fans some great advice. I’ve been hammering the Colorado Rockies for a decade now, and for good reason. Years and years of clueless ownership and management were bad enough, and then we found out about the Jesus Mandate. Now we have a fun new episode to consider. Some poor schmuck of a fan
Read moreIn their fascination with technology, are Libertarians really just seeking certainty? I just finished reading George Packer’s remarkable, if not especially uplifting, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. One of the people he considers in his biography of the modern US is billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Thiel is, among other things, a diehard Libertarian. Packer is … not.
Read moreTim Howard put on an epic display, but the last-minute heroics fell short in a 2-1 loss. It was tense. It was gut-wrenching. And in the end, heartbreaking. The US team believed. Its fans believed. And now we have to find a way to feel pride when we thought we could go further. 12 thoughts, in no particular order. 1: Timmeh.
Read moreThe round of 16 features at least nine surprises. Who has outperformed expectations? Who swallowed their tongues? The group stage of World Cup 2014 is done and we have our entrants in the round of 16, which commences tomorrow. As always there have been surprises, so let’s have a look at the teams who have performed contrary to our expectations.
Read moreBaker was the man who set me on the path to progressivism. Former Tennessee Senator and Reagan White House Chief of Staff is dead at 88. Baker was, in many ways, one of the last of his kind: to wit, a coherent Republican. I have noted before that in my youth I was a conservative – by the standards of
Read moreIt wasn’t pretty, but the Yanks advance. What next? Also, the ghost of Landon Donovan. The US Men’s team lost to Germany today, but thanks to Portugal’s win over Ghana the Americans advance anyway. 10 stray thoughts, in no particular order. 1: The pervasive emotion is relief, not elation. Thanks to its last-minute collapse against the Portuguese this was tense until the final whistle for
Read moreThe public interest is what the public is interested in, bitches. Thanks to Facebook, we all see new memes every day. Some of them are funny, some insightful, and a lot are of the preaching to the choir variety, which even though they’re right as rain, they occasionally get tiresome. Like a lot of us, frustrated as hell with the
Read moreIt was a collapse for the ages. Now it’s white-knuckle time. Gutted. Absolutely gutted. All we had to do was kill off 30 more seconds. [sigh] Well, for you glass-half-full types, at least now the Germany game means something. 1: Michael Bradley. Had you told me before the tournament started that at this stage Bradley would be one of our weaker
Read moreNike: Communist fashion bastards Which would you expect to look more like a Russian hockey sweater? a) an American soccer jersey b) a Russian soccer jersey Let’s find out.
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lullaby pit 