Academic performance by K12 Inc. somehow fails to measure up to rigorous big-money sports cartel standards. The NCAA has announced it will no longer accept coursework from two dozen online charter high schools around the country. These schools employ a curriculum from a for-profit company called K12 Inc. The move is understandable, I suppose. K12 has been heavily criticized for
Read moreThe ABA was an innovator that changed the face of modern basketball. Some of the league’s new ideas survived and made their way into the game we see played today. Here are our six favorite ABA things, in no particular order. 1: The three-point shot. The ABA didn’t invent it – the idea had been around for some time, and
Read moreIt’s been 15 years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire. I don’t have anything new to say, but I thought that we ought to pause and reflect on that day and all that has transpired in its wake. Through the years I’ve written about Columbine several times, attempting to make sense of it, perhaps create a bit of
Read moreYou have to have a plan, but happiness depends on how well you roll with the punches. The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley – Robert Burns No plan, however well conceived, survives contact with the enemy. – Military Adage Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. – Mike Tyson
Read moreChildless in Seattle? Not for long. Jim, let’s meet those bachelorettes. If you were to review my OK Cupid profile, you’d find this: And, just to be clear, this: So today, OK Cupid e-mailed me this:
Read moreIt’s Matt Grimm Day at S&R and we’re celebrating music with a social conscience. Join us? We love great bands and artists of all stripes around here, but by now it’s probably no secret that we’re champions of the overlooked genius. I don’t know. Maybe I’m projecting because I think more people ought to pay attention to me and as
Read moreKeating was an icon of the Old Testament morality that defines American culture. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real
Read moreJim Hellwig’s appearance on RAW was electric, but he was clearly not in good shape. I’m stunned. Jim Hellwig, who starred as The Ultimate Warrior for the WWF (now WWE) in the late ’80s and early ’90s, is dead at 54. The timing is remarkable. After years of tension with the WWE, they recently mended fences and on Saturday night
Read moreOur own poetic voices are the product of the voices of our heroes. Guess who mine are. Here in NaPoWriMo 2014, we’re encouraging everyone to write poetry every freakin’ day. As I said last week, write like nobody’s reading. In my case, I’m not doing new writing so much as I am reflecting on writing and thinking about the times
Read moreYou know how schools sometimes have assemblies where outside speakers or entertainers put on a show for an hour? Right. Well, when I was in first grade my school, Wallburg Elementary in sleepy little Wallburg, NC, had a musician come in. I don’t remember much about the show, except for this one thing. He said he was going to do
Read moreUS sports leagues reward inferior teams and routinely deny their best teams the championship. Richard Allen Smith and I have argued from time to time about the merits of the BCS vs. the NCAA basketball tournament. Rich defends the BCS, while I point out its unfairness and corruption. He argues that the BCS does (did) a good job at getting
Read moreNo one could possibly be THE voice of Gen X, but Cobain was certainly A voice of my generation. In their seminal 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?, published in 1993, Neil Howe and William Strauss argued that the only thing Generation Xers really agreed on was that there was no such thing as Generation X. Given the inherent irony
Read moreNo, Virginia. Intolerance of intolerance isn’t the same as intolerance of human beings. When it became public that recently appointed Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich had donated to the controversial anti-gay rights Prop 8 initiative in California back in 2008, things – as we used to say back home – blowed up. Rarebit yanked an app from the Mozilla marketplace and
Read moreNational Poetry Writing Month begins today. Will you write 30 poems in 30 days? Well, no. I won’t, not me personally. I retired from writing poetry a couple years ago. But before I did I wrote four books and am currently looking to publish them, so I definitely salute the annual celebration of the art. Here at S&R we have
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