As both of you who read this know, I am a pretty big Dallas Cowboys fan. I used to watch them in their Summer training camp in Thousand Oaks, supported them during their dismal 3-13 and 1-15 seasons in the late 80's, and haven't yet given up on them.
However, now it seems that the Cowboys will be imminently signing Terrell Owens, formally of the Phillidelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers. This one seemed a little harder to accept; after all, Owens did celebrate by "desecrating" the star in Texas Stadium as a member of the 49ers.
I have had alot of time to think about this and my perspective is, that if I can remain a loyal Cowboys fan after an ownership change and the firing of Tom Landry (their legendary coach), I can remain a loyal fan through the signing of this dumbbag. After all, he is the best receiver in the game and a fierce competitor. Also, it's not as if the Cowboys have never had a showboating, smack talking, brash receiver. And Owens hasn't even been caught smoking crack with hookers.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Nursery Photos
You may think that since I finally figured out how to post photos to my weblog that I have forgotten how to get outraged by what is going on. And temporarily, you are correct. In that light, I have included some more photos from the nursery, this time as it starts to fill up. Hope you enjoy!
Thursday, March 09, 2006
More Ultrasound Pics...
Enjoy! The black spot on top of his head is not hair, it is a shadow because it is outside of the ultrasound waves.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
3D Ultrasound
Today, Kari and I got an ultrasound to once and for all, determine the gender of our now 6 month old growing baby. It is for sure a boy. This will help Kari feel better. Now that I know how to post pictures, they are included with this post.
Have a great week.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
The Caucasus
It started with a "witty" comment regarding defining one's race: "I am an American," he said. "I am not a Caucasian. My ancestors were from Ireland, not the Caucasus."
This got me to thinking, just where are the Caucasus? This thought led to my reading 4 very good, different books on the region situated more or less between Iran and Russia, the Black and Caspian Seas. This is by far the most volatile, war-torn region in the European world, and quite possibly the whole damn thing.
The sparks were set nearly in antiquity, but the overreaching theme has been empire expansion. The turks kicked the Armenians out of what is today eastern Turkey. The Russians attempted to colonize the North Caucasus in the czarist era. But the real flames began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Without a centralized authority to settle cross-border disputes, or to clamp down on far outposts of their own nation, former Republics began to declare independence and fight their neighbors. This has led to one of the longest running insurgent wars in modern times. It is emblemized by Chechnya and Russia, but you can susbtitute either player with many others in region over the past 15+ years.
Kevin Sites, from Yahoo has been reporting on wars around the globe and is currently in the Caucasus. If you would like to read about some heartbreaking atrocities and at the same time enlighten yourself to some seriously underreported warfare, I suggest you check it out. He does a great job.
This got me to thinking, just where are the Caucasus? This thought led to my reading 4 very good, different books on the region situated more or less between Iran and Russia, the Black and Caspian Seas. This is by far the most volatile, war-torn region in the European world, and quite possibly the whole damn thing.
The sparks were set nearly in antiquity, but the overreaching theme has been empire expansion. The turks kicked the Armenians out of what is today eastern Turkey. The Russians attempted to colonize the North Caucasus in the czarist era. But the real flames began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Without a centralized authority to settle cross-border disputes, or to clamp down on far outposts of their own nation, former Republics began to declare independence and fight their neighbors. This has led to one of the longest running insurgent wars in modern times. It is emblemized by Chechnya and Russia, but you can susbtitute either player with many others in region over the past 15+ years.
Kevin Sites, from Yahoo has been reporting on wars around the globe and is currently in the Caucasus. If you would like to read about some heartbreaking atrocities and at the same time enlighten yourself to some seriously underreported warfare, I suggest you check it out. He does a great job.
Nursery
As I have shown some of you, our nursery is realling starting to get filled. With about 3 1/2 months left before the expected arrival, we are busy beavers. I am going to attempt to add a photo to this site for the first time. Hopefully, it will be sucessful.
This photo is of the crib in our nursery. It was quite a task to get it into my car, but we were finally able to do it.
Exciting New World
I can't watch Bob Schieffer on CBS evening news any longer. He is by far my favorite anchor (well, Elizabeth Vargas holds a special place in my heart), but every story coming out of his mouth is negative:
The president screwed this up..
Polls say the United States is the devil...
Iraqis dying at an alarming rate...
It reminds me of the old newspaper saying, "if it bleeds, it leads." The new mantra should be that if it isn't bleeding, it doesn't bear repeating. The evening national news is unwatchable.
However, the times in which we are living are extremely exciting. I was reading a column by Robert Samuelson this morning who talked about the likely impact of globalization where he mentioned that within the next 5 years, the middle class will be emerging at an alarming rate in many of the world's fastest growing countries, specifically China, India and Brazil. And despite what US labor unions and other protectionists would have you believe, this is not at the expense of America, only at the expense of America's role as international svengali.
For example, currently, China has a population of approximately 1.3 billion people, of whom roughly 50 million are considered "middle class." This is about 4% of the national population. That means alot of people live in abject poverty, by international standards. This middle class is expected to triple over the next 5 years, bring an additional 100 million people out of this hole of poverty. While this can create some temporary disjointedness, this is a tremendously important demographic. As you are probably aware, nations fight more wars the less they have to lose. Wealth and order creates pragmatists.
Similar trends are also emerging in the other populous nations mentioned (India and Brazil). We need to stay out of the way to keep this trend emerging.
The president screwed this up..
Polls say the United States is the devil...
Iraqis dying at an alarming rate...
It reminds me of the old newspaper saying, "if it bleeds, it leads." The new mantra should be that if it isn't bleeding, it doesn't bear repeating. The evening national news is unwatchable.
However, the times in which we are living are extremely exciting. I was reading a column by Robert Samuelson this morning who talked about the likely impact of globalization where he mentioned that within the next 5 years, the middle class will be emerging at an alarming rate in many of the world's fastest growing countries, specifically China, India and Brazil. And despite what US labor unions and other protectionists would have you believe, this is not at the expense of America, only at the expense of America's role as international svengali.
For example, currently, China has a population of approximately 1.3 billion people, of whom roughly 50 million are considered "middle class." This is about 4% of the national population. That means alot of people live in abject poverty, by international standards. This middle class is expected to triple over the next 5 years, bring an additional 100 million people out of this hole of poverty. While this can create some temporary disjointedness, this is a tremendously important demographic. As you are probably aware, nations fight more wars the less they have to lose. Wealth and order creates pragmatists.
Similar trends are also emerging in the other populous nations mentioned (India and Brazil). We need to stay out of the way to keep this trend emerging.
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