Iraqi Soccer News

Yep, you read that correctly. These two blurbs were buried in the back of the Sports Section of the Dallas Morning News.

Police say that an Iraqi soccer player was shot dead just as he was about to kick what could have been the tying goal in a weekend game south of Baghdad. A police major said that a striker from the Buhairat amateur team was facing only the goalie Sunday in a match in Hillah when a supporter of the rival Sinjar club shot him in the head in the final minute of play. The major said that a spectator was arrested.

And the other:

Two teams representing the Shiite villages of Sinjar and Enana, near Hilla, which is south of Baghdad, played a close-fought match on Saturday, with Sinjar winning, 2-1. During celebrations, an off-duty police officer started firing his service pistol into the air but lost control of it, the police said. A bullet struck the Sinjar goalie, an 18-year-old high school senior named Mohammed Amin, in the head, killing him instantly. There was no indication the goalie was shot intentionally; the police officer was a Sinjar fan

Oh, my.

Spring Break Pick Me Up

And Now, Happy St. Patrick's Day

I've got a very high Beat Down Factor ---- It doesn't take much for things to get old for me in a hurry. But I laugh every single time I watch this video. "Who else seen the Leprechaun? Say 'Yeah!!!!'"

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• "Everything happens for a reason." As I saw someone else say a couple of days ago, I've never really believed that. It just has some pre-destination feel to it that doesn't seem right.
• OU women's basketball coach, Sherri Coale, has always sort of jazzed me.
• If you would have bought Citigroup stock a couple of weeks ago, you would have more than doubled your money by now.
• I avoid, if at all possible, any voluntary gathering where more than four or five people I know will be there.
• Walmart is going to start having stores dedicated to our friends south of the border.
• Dale Hansen yesterday on ESPN local radio: "Drug addiction and alcoholism are not diseases . . . . When you can go to the doctor for a problem and the remedy is to 'don't do it anymore', then it's not a disease."
• The Montague jail scandal has now made a Yahoo slideshow.
• I think I see things through a tunnel as opposed to globally. If I walk into an unfamiliar room and then walk out, I can't tell you anything about about it. (Carpet or hardwood? Wallpaper or paint? Number of chairs? Ceiling type? I don't have a clue.)
• I'd be a horrible crime scene witness.
• I'll admit that Iraq has calmed down. But once we leave, whether it be in one year or twenty years, it will turn into a disaster.
• PBS had a special last night which was basically a helicopter view of Ireland. Oh, the places I want to go.
• I left something obvious off my list my "Socialism in America" list from a couple of weeks ago: Social Security.
• Motorcycle accident shut down I-30 by Six Flags this morning. I-35 in Denton was shut down to a motorcycle accident yesterday.
• Actress Natasha Richardson is in critical condition after a skiing accident in Canada. I really didn't know who she was but I learned she is the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, married to Liam Neeson, and was one of the moms in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.
• My twitter username is "BSG". I've found that quite a few people follow me because apparently they think it is an acronym for "Battlestar Galactica."
• There's has been so much of the countryside along 287 between Decatur and Rhome that has been destroyed with unsightly construction of utilities and businesses.
• Edit: I've posted this pic before?

Things I Don't Understand

George Will put this graphic up this weekend on This Week With George Stephanopoulos to show how the current supply of money in the U.S. has taken off. (The source was the Federal Reserve Bank out of St. Louis.) How in the world is inflation not out of control?

I'm Pretty Sure This Is My Third Ex-Wife

Baby, I miss you. (If the video description is correct, it is from Spring Break 2009). Thanks, Keith.

My Crazy Thought On Time

(Edit: The picture is not of a basketball clock. Just demonstrates what a clock depicting hundredths of a second looks like.)

I think about this every time during March Madness, but I've never posted it because it qualifies as Crazy Talk. Several years ago, someone with a big brain figured out that when the scoreboard clock rolled down from "0:01" to "0.00" there was actually still a second left on the clock. So they added tenths of seconds to the game clock. So instead of seeing the old countdown in seconds of 

00:02 

00:01 

00:00 <----horn nbsp="" p="" sounds="">

We now see this: 

00:02.0 

00:01.9 

00:01.8 

00:01.7 

00:01.6 

00:01.5 

00:01.4 

00:01.3 

00:01.2 

00:01.1 

00:01.0 

00:00.9 <-- and="" assumed="" four="" game="" is="" nbsp="" over="" p="" see="" the="" this="" to="" used="" was="" we="" where="" zeros="">

00:00.8 

00:00.7 

00:00.6 

00:00.5 

00:00.4 

00:00.3 

00:00.2 

00:00.1 

00:00.0 <---horn nbsp="" now="" p="" sounds="">

But here's my crazy issue: Once the tenth of a second goes to 0, isn't there a hundredth of a second that needs to be counted off as well? If we added another digit to the clock, and continued the countdown from the last example, we'd see this: 

00.00.10 

00:00.09 <---where horn="" nbsp="" now="" p="" sounds="" the="">

00:00.08 

00:00.07 

00:00.06 

00:00.05 

00:00.04 

00:00.03 

00:00.02 

00:00.01 

00:00.00 

But here's where I really lose my mind. Can't we continue to add a digit every time our clock goes down to all zeros? For example, once the clock reaches 00:00.00, can't we now divide the last unit of time into thousands of a second starting with 00:00.009. And once we get down to 00:00.000 can't we start all over again with 00:00.0009? Does that make sense? It seems like that last second, if we continue to divide it up by adding an extra digit, would never end. My brain tells me that once a second passes a second passes, but it seems like we could always divide the last portion of it up just a little bit more. And, I'll admit, this is my nuttiest post ever. Edit: And this post is about time and the concept of slicing up time. Not about whether anything can possible be done on a basketball court within a fraction of a second. 

Edit: Thanks for (some of) the helpful comments. This really is akin to Zeno's Paradoxes -- something, I'll admit, I had never heard of.

Dallas Observor's Richie Whitt's House Is Haunted

I've always been a fan of Richie Whitt's writing, but he's put up a couple of posts over at his blog which are a bit unnerving. Part 1. (from early March) Part 2. (from earlier today)

Monday Afternoon Pick Me Up

Montage County Jail Makes National News Again With New AP Story

Link. I'm pretty sure all the Montague inmates are still in the Wise County jail.

The Wisdom Of Ann Curry via Twitter

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• The round table discussions on Sunday morning news shows are fairly interesting. The interviews that begin the show, not so much.
• It would be cool if there were a reality show called "Hot Girls In Scary Places." Well, I'll be.
• Baylor got invited to the play in the NIT. That's like being asked out to go to Denny's.
• Fox 4 tells me that Lake Bridgeport is over 9 feet low?
• The driver's license hearings I always go to are always held at 1:00 in the afternoon. But today, due to a weird course of events, they will have a special setting at 10:30 in the morning just for me.
• I watched some of the Will Ferrell's HBO special, "You're Welcome America: A Final Night With George Bush." It was funny but not that funny.
• I just saw on Facebook that a buddy I graduated from high school with is celebrating his 24th wedding anniversary today. That's shocking in at least a couple of ways.
• I bought some black K-Swiss tennis shoes last summer. The moment I walked out of the store I had a little bit of regret and that feeling has never gone away.
• But I saw a stylish black guy wearing the same shoes a couple of months later so that helped.
• Getting on a bus to drive to Austin to "meet with legislators" does not sound like the way I would want to spend my day.
• Last year, the Aggies made the NCAA Tournament as the 9th seed and they played BYU. This year, they ended up as the 9th seed and will play BYU.
• I've never gone anywhere for "Spring Break."

I Knew There Was Something About Madoff That Was Bugging Me

This Is Either The Decatur Walmart At Christmas . . .

. . . or chaos outside of "America's Next Top Model" auditions.

We've Hit The Big Time In A Bad Way

A faithful reader points out that Decatur was referenced in The New York Times yesterday. (Thanks Jake.)

That Sound You Heard Was The Death Star Exploding

Baylor 76 Evil Empire 70 The Bears hit 12 of their last 13 free throws.

Math Question

Just thought about this and need some help from The Big Brains on Brad out there. Baylor and Texas play tonight. Baylor has lost 24 straight times. Let's assume that in each of those games Texas entered the contest with a 90% chance of winning. With that being said: What were the odds that Texas would win 24 in a row? My guess is the equation would be 90/100 to the 24th power. But I have no idea what I'm saying. Edit: Thanks, guys. I chose the 90% assumption for each game in order to see how incredible it is to win 24 in a row (even if one team is an overwhelming favorite each time.)

Say What

From The Today Show this morning.

The last person to see a 5-year-old Florida girl before she went missing — who is also the new teenage bride of the child’s father — acknowledged that there are inconsistencies in the stories she’s told investigators, but was unable to say why her account has changed.

Link and video here.