Auburn (7-4) plays Alabama (6-5) this week. Winning this year's game will go a long way toward salvaging disappointing football seasons. I know I will feel a thousand percent better about the losses if the Tigers notch the victory against the Crimson Tide.
About a week ago, Auburn did lose their second biggest rivalry game to Georgia, by a score of 45-20. It was twice in a row that my alma mater has been embarrassed by the Bulldogs. But that's football ... and there's always next year.
Last night, I was watching a movie called Facing the Giants. It was purely a Christian message movie, enscounced in the tale of an underdog high school football team determining to play and live for God's glory. It was highly predictable in it's unlikely outcome, poorly acted, smaltzy, and obviously low-budget. (You could tell it was low budget because the southern accents weren't fake.)
I loved it.
Georgia's heach coach, Mark Richt, had what amounted to a bit more than a cameo role in the film playing himself. Prior to the big game where "our" team --- the Eagles --- meets the Giants, Richt tells the Eagles coach, "You won the big one when you accepted Christ."
You don't generally expect big-time college coaches to make such an unequivocal statement of faith.
The loss to Georgia was put in a whole new perspective. It turns out that Mark Richt is a coach for my team after all.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
You Can’t Teach an Old Dog to Bark at the Moon
I knew a fellow who said he looked forward to getting old and yelling at kids to get off his lawn. As I get older (or “old” as compared to a couple of my friends) I find there’s not quite as much to look forward to as when I was in my teens or early 20s. That leaves becoming an unapologetic curmudgeon pretty near the top of my "things to do list."
(Already, I sometimes find myself yelling at some television talking head, asking "Who are you and why are you on my TV?!?")
In my twilight years — if I have the energy (doubtful) and the money (even more doubtful) — I would like to take my cantankerousness and enroll in the most politically correct, leftist university in the country. I think I’d major in “Women’s Studies” or something like that — any of those ridiculous social “sciences” courses that exist only to provide paychecks for frustrated Stalinists who missed out on Amerikan Politiburo jobs when the Soviet Empire collapsed.
Recently the University of Delaware backed off of an attempt to “re-educate” its freshmen, thanks in large part to the wonderful Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (http://www.thefire.org/). Seems the university’s thought police felt classroom indoctrination wasn’t sufficient for turning all the students into the bleating sheep described in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, so they were going to force the freshmen to attend dorm meetings for proper instruction on such topics as politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. Don’t be misled, this re-education was no more a forum for open-minded discussion any more than was Pol Pot’s.
Here’s some of the crap these poor kids would have been forced to endure:
"Have you ever heard a well-meaning white person say, 'I'm not a member of any race except the human race?’ What she usually means by this statement is that she doesn't want to perpetuate racial categories by acknowledging that she is white. This is an evasion of responsibility for her participation in a system based on supremacy for white people."
Of course, the University of Delaware isn’t alone in advocating student brain-washing (though they don’t call it that). In a Nov. 12 article in the Weekly Standard, David Horowitz tells us how the American Association of University Professors are trying to legitimize student indoctrination. Horowitz reports the AAUP as saying, “It is not indoctrination for professors to expect students to comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that is accepted as true within a relevant discipline.”
What ever happened to “the scientific method” of rigorously and continuously testing hypotheses?
The AAUP stance is probably much like the argument the Catholic Church made in prosecuting Galileo for heresy. After all, it’s clear that Galileo failed to “comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that (was) accepted as true” by the Church.
Two things strike me about all this. First, why is it that a public school teacher can’t wear a tiny crucifix in class without the ACLU screaming bloody murder, but leftist loons are free to proselytize all they want … to the point of literally persecuting students who don’t want to drink the Kool-Aid?
And the second point: This is the standard modus operandi of weird religious cults who target young people — especially those on their own for the first time.
And that’s why I hope to go back to a PC college in the winter of my life. I doubt those bullies would get very far trying to “re-educate” this cranky old man.
(Already, I sometimes find myself yelling at some television talking head, asking "Who are you and why are you on my TV?!?")
In my twilight years — if I have the energy (doubtful) and the money (even more doubtful) — I would like to take my cantankerousness and enroll in the most politically correct, leftist university in the country. I think I’d major in “Women’s Studies” or something like that — any of those ridiculous social “sciences” courses that exist only to provide paychecks for frustrated Stalinists who missed out on Amerikan Politiburo jobs when the Soviet Empire collapsed.
Recently the University of Delaware backed off of an attempt to “re-educate” its freshmen, thanks in large part to the wonderful Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (http://www.thefire.org/). Seems the university’s thought police felt classroom indoctrination wasn’t sufficient for turning all the students into the bleating sheep described in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, so they were going to force the freshmen to attend dorm meetings for proper instruction on such topics as politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. Don’t be misled, this re-education was no more a forum for open-minded discussion any more than was Pol Pot’s.
Here’s some of the crap these poor kids would have been forced to endure:
"Have you ever heard a well-meaning white person say, 'I'm not a member of any race except the human race?’ What she usually means by this statement is that she doesn't want to perpetuate racial categories by acknowledging that she is white. This is an evasion of responsibility for her participation in a system based on supremacy for white people."
Of course, the University of Delaware isn’t alone in advocating student brain-washing (though they don’t call it that). In a Nov. 12 article in the Weekly Standard, David Horowitz tells us how the American Association of University Professors are trying to legitimize student indoctrination. Horowitz reports the AAUP as saying, “It is not indoctrination for professors to expect students to comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that is accepted as true within a relevant discipline.”
What ever happened to “the scientific method” of rigorously and continuously testing hypotheses?
The AAUP stance is probably much like the argument the Catholic Church made in prosecuting Galileo for heresy. After all, it’s clear that Galileo failed to “comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that (was) accepted as true” by the Church.
Two things strike me about all this. First, why is it that a public school teacher can’t wear a tiny crucifix in class without the ACLU screaming bloody murder, but leftist loons are free to proselytize all they want … to the point of literally persecuting students who don’t want to drink the Kool-Aid?
And the second point: This is the standard modus operandi of weird religious cults who target young people — especially those on their own for the first time.
And that’s why I hope to go back to a PC college in the winter of my life. I doubt those bullies would get very far trying to “re-educate” this cranky old man.
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