This is an article I wish that I could have written. I have thought that John McCain should not be President for some time, and I am quite dismayed that so many Republican voters feel he is the right person for the job. Mark Levin summed up my own thoughts on McCain and his positions perfectly.
Link: National Review Online
Yesterday (January 28) was the fiftieth anniversary of when the first patent for Lego blocks was filed, and Gizmodo has a timeline of significant years in the history of the brand.
When I was a kid, I had a Lego set that included some of those “blocky” circa-1974 figures, and I also had several of the Legoland Castle and Pirates sets.
Link: Gizmodo
The winner of the Men’s Singles event at this year’s first Grand Slam tournament is the up-and-coming tennis player Novak Đoković, who has shown himself to be quite a capable competitor over the past year. The Serbian champion defeated Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final on Sunday 4–6 6–4 6–3 7–6(2), becoming the first person representing the Republic of Serbia to win a Grand Slam singles title (although I feel confident that Ana Ivanović and Jelena Janković won’t be too far behind him).
But despite Đoković’s victory, the sports media seems to be focusing most of its attention on Roger Federer, who lost to Đoković in the semifinals in straight sets. While it is an unusual occurrence to see the Swiss star be defeated so decisively, it shouldn’t be such a surprise for even a player as skilled as Roger Federer to lose once in a while. Federer, who had played in the previous ten Grand Slam finals and won eight of them, was probably overdue for a slip-up. Part of the problem is that Federer has been propped up so much by sports writers as a man with near superhuman abilities that any failure on his part appears to be catastrophic by comparison.
Novak Đoković played well throughout the Australian Open, and he deserved this victory. And he should receive the media attention for his accomplishment instead of Federer’s lack of success.
Link: Fox Sports
I get that this is just some of Huckabee’s trademark humor, but really, I am a little put off by having this guy imply to the press that Southerners are so simply-minded as to vote against a candidate because he doesn’t eat a Southern dish the “right” way.
Link: CNN: Political Ticker
Not much is known at this point, but actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon by his housekeeper at his residence in SoHo.
Ledger was probably best known for his role in the controversial film Brokeback Mountain, and for playing the role of Batman’s archenemy the Joker in the yet-to-be-released summer blockbuster The Dark Knight. I remember him best from the comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (a favorite of my wife).
Link: TMZ
The downward slope upon which our moral standards reside just became a whole lot more slippery.
Link: Washington Post
And that is not the assertion of this conservative, PC guy. That is the finding of Mindset Media, an online advertising network which collaborated with Nielsen Online to conduct a study of Mac enthusiasts.
The survey of 7,500 people, released to coincide with Macworld, found that those it describes as “open-minded” are far more likely than the general population to use a Mac. These so-called open-minded individuals are — according to Mindset Media — “more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large.”
Link: Engadget
Unsurprisingly, Governor Mitt Romney has come in first in Michigan’s GOP primary with thirty-nine percent of the vote, beating both New Hampshire winner John McCain (thirty percent) and Iowa winner Mike Huckabee (sixteen percent). Romney had sort of a home-state advantage in Michigan since his father George Romney had been governor of the state, and the media declared Michigan a “must-win” state for Romney.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton won a commanding victory over… “Uncommitted.”
Link: CNN
Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person known to have ever set foot on the summit of Mount Everest, died Friday of heart failure at the age of eighty-eight. Hillary was part of the 1953 expedition which set out to reach the world’s highest point, and he and fellow mountaineer Tenzing Norgay achieved that feat on May 29 of that year.
Following the accomplishment of climbing to the top of Mount Everest, Edmund Hillary was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and became famous around the world. The New Zealander was so well-known, in fact, that Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady and current Presidential contender, once falsely claimed that she was named for the famed explorer (which couldn’t possibly be since she was born over five years prior to Hillary’s climbing of Everest).
Link: New Zealand Herald
