History is Written by Winners or "De vita et moribus tredecim virorum paraguaycorum"

If crashing out of the World Cup is not bad enough for England, the Catholic Church reports that Association Football actually may have originated in Paraguay, which of course has advanced further than England in this year's tournament.:Amidst the enthusiasm over the World Cup Soccer tournament, L’Osservatore Romano published an article this week arguing that the Guarani...

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Moochers

What is a moocher? Here are some defintions from the Urban Dictionary: Someone who always asks for things and favors constantly and will never leave you alone. They will ask for money, rides to places, for you to do simple tasks they could do easily but they think the whole world should cater to them, basically just a leech to everyone around them, a parasite to the community....

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Ten Myths of Global Warming and the Green Economy

No, this is not a post about what who believes what about science (snore). This is a post about the economic and political assumptions that guide thinking about climate policy.Andy Revkin helpfully points to a new report (PDF) from the Information Technology and Information Foundation, which seeks to expose 10 myths of global climate change. Here they are:1) Higher prices...

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Early Appearance of TCF in the MSM

The Climate Fix got a brief mention in a review of books on geoengineering which appeared in the New York Times yesterday. The review provided a few suggestive quotes from the book:Still, if geoengineering is not yet an idea whose time has come, it is definitely gaining traction. It is discussed in . . . forthcoming book, “The Climate Fix,” by Roger Pielke Jr., a professor...

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Elena Kagan on the Judge-Umpire Analogy

Because we can never get enough of the judge-umpire analogy on our blog, here you go:Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan says she agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts that justices basically act like baseball umpires in deciding complex legal issues.But Kagan said the metaphor isn't quite that simple.She said Wednesday that while judges should be strictly neutral, they...

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Justice Stevens and the Baseball Antitrust Exemption

Henry Fetter has written an interesting piece for The Atlantic, looking back at retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' work as associate counsel to the Monopoly Power Subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee, and in particular the role he played during the 1951 Celler Hearings regarding the antitrust status of Major League Baseball. Here is an excerpt:As curious crowds thronged the Capitol amidst a crush of reporters and newsreel cameras, a diverse lineup of baseball notables took the witness table, including...

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USC, Institutional Control, and Analogizing the NCAA and the Securities and Exchange Commission

Lewis & Clark law professor Tung Yin has a thoughtful post on his blog, The Yin Blog, that looks into the NCAA's sanctioning of the University of Southern California and draws parallels to SEC investigations. Here's an excerpt:As virtually all college football fans must be aware, the NCAA has dropped a 2000 lb JDAM on USC for its failure of institutional control over...

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Strengthening the Soul

You never know how you are going to impact a kid. At one of our camps I was talking with a player entering his senior year of HS. He had never been to a bonfire, never slept in a tent, never held a fishing pole much less catch a fish, never swam in a pond, never heard of a smore, never saw the big dipper ... watching this kid experience camp was like watching my little...

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Take Me to the River!

Just about the only thing saving my sanity during the awful heatwave we are having in Vienna, is the splendid and beautiful Danube. The Danube River and the Danube Canal run through the length of the city, and the bicycle paths along them are extremely useful for travel from one neighborhood to another. The streets of Vienna may be choking with exhaust fumes and the asphalt...

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Jennifer Capriati and the "Capriati Rule"

Yesterday, various media outlets reported that Jennifer Capriati was rushed to a hospitial for a possible overdose of prescription drugs.At the age of 34, Capriati has not played professional tennis for 5+ years following shoulder surgery. However, she has yet to officially retire from the sport. Her career record is impressive. Among the numerous highlights - a gold medal...

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Virtue Camp Testimony

The Xenia virtue camp was a wonderful confirmation of what SportsLeader is striving to do. Here is the testimony of their head coach:     As a 23 year veteran coach,  I have personally witnessed the change in our parenting culture and seen the effects it has had on our young men.  Our young men are getting less parenting than any time in my career. ...

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Do We Care If They See Our Underwear?

[image via velo-mama] Ah, the topic of underpant visibility whilst cycling in a skirt! It is truly one of which we lady cyclists never seem to tire. Some enthusiastically discuss methods of tying down the skirt so as to curb its treacherous revelations. Others advocate wearing leggings. But as I cycled to various meetings in different parts of Vienna today in insane mid-day...

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Being Rasheed Wallace: Would you Walk Away from $12 Million Guaranteed?

In the wake of the Lakers defeating the Celtics in the NBA finals, Celtics center/power forward Rasheed Wallace surprisingly retired. Though he played in 79 of the 82 regular season games and all of the Celtics' playoff games, the 35-year-old Wallace has battled an assortment of injuries in recent years, including foot and ankle problems.So he decided to call it a career.In...

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Swedish Elite Kettlebell Training Camp, 2011

I januari 2011 kommer lilla Motala att gästas av stora kettlebell-lyftare från Ryssland inom ramarna för IKSFA.Motalas utlysning: LÄNK IKSFA: LÄNKRachinsky och Rudnev arbetar som tränare inom det ryska försvaret. Alla instruktörerna har världsmästartitlar.Det första IKSFA-lägret ägde rum i St Petersburg i maj. Det verkar ha varit mycket givande. Min bekanting Ari skrev flera...

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Leadership Camp - Covington Catholic

I was blessed to be a part of 2 different leadership camps last week. The first was the biggest one ever, Covington Catholic High School - 70, and the second was the smallest ever, Xenia High School - 8.Both were unique and extraordinary. Having been with over 12 schools and 1 college from 3 different states I can flat out declare - Coach, you NEED to do this with your...

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ICAT Damage Estimator 2010

The image above is a screen shot from the ICAT Damage Estimator, and on-line application that operationalizes our normalized US hurricane loss data (PDF) and allows it to be explored in the context of current storms and their predicted paths. The image above shows Alex and its forecasted location by the National Hurricane Center. You can use the site to display individual...

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The Other Book

Our book on presidential science advice (along with a few chapters on Congress) is now out. Here is how Springer describes the book:For the past 50 years a select group of scientists has provided advice to the US President, mostly out of the public eye, on issues ranging from the deployment of weapons to the launching of rockets to the moon to the use of stem cells to...

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Winter Blues

Gosh, we are having SUCH a wet awful winter so far and it's not even July yet! We have just basically had eight days of rain (Yo! Noah, I'll book 30 spaces now if that is ok with you, thanks!) and the place is about as wet as I have ever seen it. It is very hard not to get depressed when everywhere you look there is mud or puddles. The dam burst its banks over the weekend...

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Who are the Most Over- and Under-Paid World Cup Managers?

[UPDATE: New Zealand's coach appears to have received a phantom raise in the list below.]The table below shows the salaries (in Euros) of the managers of the 32 World Cup teams, courtesy of futelbolfinance.com. I have made one change to their data (which is from 2009, and does not include any bonuses), and that is to add Sven Goran Eriksson (to replace his much lower-paid...

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More Antitrust and the BCS

Following up on my post from last week, the Idaho Statesmen features an interesting article today regarding a potential antitrust lawsuit against the Bowl Championship Series. The article notes that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff intends to continue his pursuit of an antitrust case against the BCS, despite Utah's recent admission into the Pac-10. The article reports that AG Shurtleff will be meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice in mid-July to discuss the possibility of the DOJ challenging the BCS under federal antitrust law, with a...

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The Invisibles

By Randy TraegerHead Football Coach Oregon     It’s natural for every coach to focus on the kids who are exciting, involved, athletically talented and engaged. These are the kids you coach for right?  Then there are those kids that are the “invisibles”.  They add to your team numbers, and sometimes contribute on scout teams, but, let’s face it, they...

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Putting the World in the Cup

Today's NYT has this interesting graphic which shows the globalization of the World Cup, in terms of the teams that are represent...

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In Da House

So, apparently even in Vienna I am incapable of riding just one bike. Now I have Jacqueline the lady's Waffenrad and Kurt the trackbike living with me. Jacqueline stays in the courtyard, chained to a pipe. Kurt leads a pampered lifestyle indoors.Here are his posh private quarters, under the loft stairs and on my housemate's nice rug. Amazingly, she does not object to her...

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Ironic Twist?

At the same time the sport of soccer is gaining some momentum in the USA with its national team advancing to the knockout stage (versus Ghana today at 2:30 p.m. ET) of the World Cup, the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, NY, is shuttering its operations at the 35,000 square-foot facility due to lack of funding.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575329002167594086.html?mod=WSJ_worldcup_left_TopStor...

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USA Fuels TV Ratings

The stateside following of Team USA at the 2010 World Cup has thus far amounted to a 68% increase in TV viewership over the event four years ago, according to Nielsen Media Research. Broadcasts of Team USA's group stage matches on ESPN, ABC, and Univision averaged 11.1 million viewers, with the USA-England match drawing 17.1 million.http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/usa-ratings-up-big-in-2010-world-cup/http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/u-s-game-draws-big-numbers-for-es...

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The Twin H Virtues

By Fritz KnappLacrosse Coach and Author I can honestly say that of all the virtues, “honesty” is at the same time my favorite and the one on which I have to pray and work the hardest. Part of the problem is we live in an age of brutal honesty, where it’s in vogue for someone to tell another exactly what’s on their mind. Actually, many would consider brutal honesty the virtue,...

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