VDH's Take On...The Humanities

Victor Davis Hanson's Essay from City Journal on the Future of the Humanities and the difficulty of obtaining a classical education from many public universities.

On...Greg Maddux

Greg Maddux

The best pitcher of his generation is hanging up the cleats. 355 game winner Greg Maddux is retiring at 42 years old even though he is clearly in good enough shape for a few more years and a few more wins. But every career must come to an end. Even you you have that many wins, 4 consecutive Cy Young Awards and 18 Gold Glove Awards (the most by anyone ever). He is also 10th all time in Strikeouts (3,371) and only Walter Johnson and Warren Spawn have more wins since 1900. And 17 straight seasons with at least 15 wins or more. That there is amazing.

I've enjoyed watching Maddux since I was a kid loving the Cubs and their ace, Mad Dog in the late 80s and early 90s. A nickname by the way which is clearly a joke. The guy is nice, almost vanilla, but he could paint the corners and tear apart a batting line up. I still admired him when he went to the Atlanta Braves (and yes helped beat my Cleveland Indians in the 1995 World Series). By the way he was 19-2 with a 1.63 ERA. That too is freaking amazing. And the year before his ERA was 1.53. He did make it back to Chicago for a few years before finishing his career with the Padres and Dodgers who gave him little run support. He should have at least 10 more wins.

He is a first ballot Hall of Famer and should get one of the highest percentages of all time in the voting. No one can deny Greg Maddux the halls of Cooperstown. Later Mad Dog.

ESPN has a nice article HERE about Maddux

Career stats HERE

Plus the classic and hilarious "Chicks Dig the Long Ball"
Nike ad from the 90s with fellow Brave Tom Glavine.

ON...Best Game Ever?

Empire: Total War, coming out in Feb 2009 looks unbelievably awesome!!

I'm going to lose a lot of hours playing this bad boy.

VIDEO TRAILER HERE

On...the Power of Money

Cash cow

In the final stretch of the 2008 election, Obama had 4x the money to spend than McCain.

Wow, how could you not lose? That is a huge advantage, especially in reaching fence-sitters through ads.

Just shows the enthusiasm of the Obama supporters compared to the McCain supporters. Too many conservatives stayed home on election day and closed their wallets all fall. Which on one hand I understand (McCain 2008 wasn't McCain 2000 enough) but on the other hand you stay home because you don't like McCain and you get someone who appeared clearly left-wing. So you get nothing close to what you want. There's level 1 thinking for you.

I'm still amazed McCain scored 47% of the vote.

More on the data of cash from Bloomberg's

On...Surviving a Terrorist Attack at your Local Hotel

Interesting piece from Atlantic blogger Jeffrey Goldberg

How to Stay Alive in a Terrorized Hotel

On...Bombay

The Hot Spot

I don't pretend to really know all that much about India and its diverse culture and long history/rivalry with Pakistan but I do know that it will play no-small role in the future. As for the terrorist attacks in Bombay the war against Islamic-fascism knows no rest. I've included a number of article for your enjoyment regarding the latest battle.

First Christopher Hitchens on why India is a very important ally and what we need to do to assist them.

Second a brief article from SLATE on why Bombay's name was changed to Mumbai and why I will continue to call it Bombay just as I will call Burma Burma and not that other name.

Third is from Robert Kagan on what the USA should do regarding Pakistan. From the Washington Post

President-Elect Obama rattled the sabers pretty hard regarding Pakistan, it's soon going to be game time. Now that he firmly has a centrist (almost center-right) foreign policy team (Hillary, Gen. Jones, Gates, Biden) I wonder if the moonbats are having indigestion yet.

Rich Lowry of the NY Post mirrors much of my take on Obama's Alpha Team HERE