A Christmas Wish! Plus Other Things!

I DIDN'T REALLY THINK THINGS THOUGH when I decided to do my Michael Jordan-esq “I’m Back” announcement recently. It’s Christmas! Also Hanukkah and Kwanza. It’s probably other Holidays too, but I’m the stereotypical American that is blissfully ignorant of things outside his personal experience.

Regardless, I’ve been struggling with what to do with this blog, I’m toying with the idea of doing a theme, or interviewing folks, or whatever. It seems like me continuing to talk about my pets or home improvement projects might not be the best use of everyone’s time.

We’ll see though, that also means more work for me. I’m not a huge fan of actually doing work that I don’t have to. I noticed lots of folks are taking time off of blogging for the holiday. But I may post a few times - even if no one is around. I need the practice.

IN THE WAKE of the horrific school shooting last week – which I hope to never mention again – I did get led down a rabbit hole of statistics. I found some stats (real ones, not made up ones) that made me do a double take: 

Murders in the U.S. in 2011:        12,664

Murders in England in  2011:       551

When we factor in the population base, some quick head math tells me that the odds of getting murdered in the US in a year is about 1 in 24,000.

In England – 1 in a million.*

That’s a pretty stunning disparity. What can I say? Wow. I would add that this has nothing to do with all that gun control talk that has been dominating the news since the tragedy - but that is a HUGE difference. I didn't read any details about why that might be the case. I just saw the stats. I have my opinions, but I'll leave it to others to interpret what they want from the data.

IN LESS EXCITING NEWS, I took the missus to see The Hobbit this week. Her review was more or less identical to mine. Except that she turned to me halfway through the movie and mentioned she really wanted to throw up. A comment on the HFR 3D and not the quality of the movie itself.

She did have a complaint, but it’s pretty spoilery, and I figure it’s new enough of a movie that I might unwittingly ruin the experience for others if I blurt it out.

*That's me doing math there. I only mention it because I was pretty generous with rounding. I think I came up with something like 1 in 963,000 - but that's close enough to round up to a cool million in my book.

Hall of Fame

Today is a historic day. I spent most of the late eighties and nineties in awe of Michael Jordan. In my opinion, the greatest to ever play. So I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and join the rest of the world in congratulating Michael on being inducted into the hall of fame.

A few weeks ago, a video made its rounds on the internet of Michael - a 46 year-old Michael - embarassing slamball star Chris Young.

In case you can't figure out which one is Michael, he's the guy in the blue jeans.



Awesome. It's hard to see in the video, but the only basket Jordan missed he was hit on the arm during the shot. You can hear the folks watching call the foul as he shot. Also, I found it funny that as the video goes on, you can see Chris Young put less and less effort into his defense. I figure he knew a lost cause when he saw one. Too funny.

Also, I found this video while I was looking for the Jordan clip above... watch this one from a no name NBA guy named James White.



Seriously, I've watched a lot of clips of guys who can jump, but I've never seen anything like that. I almost wanted to believe that the goal in the video was only 9 feet high. His entire head was above the rim. I dare someone show me something more impressive.

Wow.