A rose by any other name is still as sweet

Or conversely, a pile of crap by any other name is still as smelly.

My beloved Valparaiso University ditched the Mid-Continent Conference for the Horizon League last summer, with competition to begin once school resumes in the fall. Valpo was an inaugural founder of the Mid-Con and held the league together as the only school regularly worth a damn in the conference. So after Valpo jumped ship, the Mid-Con sank. Really, it did.

The Mid-Con is no more. In an on-line article titled "Mid-Con Presidents Council Launches Summit Plan" a reader will find four paragraphs later that the league has changed its name to the Summit League. Geographically, eliminating "Mid-Continent" makes sense as schools ranged in location from the midwest to Eastern Asia.

However, what preceded the name change announcement was a vague call to make the Summit League a better place.

The Summit Plan, which places an emphasis on presidential leadership, seeks to advance the league to one of the premier mid-major conferences in the country. It focuses on student-athlete welfare, academic performance, increased home attendance and improving the league’s rating percentage index (RPI) in all sports.

Ok. So previously the Mid-Con didn't want to be one of the "premier mid-major conferences?" And by "premier" the council really means academic excellence leading to improved attendance. I'm not sure that those go hand-in-hand (not looking this up but I think Ohio State has graduated 1 player in the last 7 years), but I suppose it's a noble goal worth striving for.

Just how does this happen?

The league plans to recognize the academic achievements of its student-athletes at every opportunity, while seeking to improve the Academic Progress Report (APR) scores of each team.

If I were a Summit League athlete, believe you me, I would be motivated at the appearance of my name on a not-so-widely-read press release. As for raising the "APR," I'm pretty sure that phrasing just means that there will be a league wide commitment to cheating.

The marketing efforts will be focused on increasing the home attendance, which helps support the student-athletes and provides additional exposure.

I suppose that there are even going to be any "marketing efforts" at all is an improvement from the devoid publicity the league generated for itself over the last decade. We can only hope that these efforts aren't limited to a free Summit League banner to be hung in each home gymnasium, though I'm sure that's probably what it will amount to.

In addition, the Summit Plan will include a review of staffing, budgeting and scheduling by each member institution to be conducted with the goal of improving the RPI in all conference sports.

How about reviewing the staffing, budgeting, and scheduling of league offices instead of the individual schools? I will forever contend that "staffing" would be solved by hiring Tony Hamilton, former Mid-Con guru of everything. He could be commissioner, PR man, and bouncer.

"Budgeting" would be considerably easier if anyone in authority had some goal of geographic improvement to the conference. The odd number of teams led to some crazy travel patterns such as the ever enjoyable flights from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Kansas City, Missouri, and finally Cedar City, Utah. As is, Valpo left citing these concerns and will now take much cheaper and quicker bus trips to Chicago and Cleveland.

But it was the fourth paragraph the dropped the bombshell of a new league name. This critical paragraph also boasted of a new logo, image, and website. The logo is simplistic, doing away with the awful looking red and blue rainbow and introducing a sleek mountain peek.

The logo itself was designed by Nina Schmidt, a graphic designer at South Dakota State University.

I'm glad that the league is already looking at its own budget and opting to go with student work rather than bother with any type of professional search. The best part, though, is that Nina Schmidt from South Dakota State isn't even in the conference yet. The school will be June 1st, but I like that it took a new school to bother coming up with anything. Had I have known the logo search would have gone this direction, I would have contacted my sister for the job. Dani could have done this as she meets the qualifications of a.) student graphic designer b.) improve the current garbage logo and c.) not in the conference. In would boost her resume and perhaps increase her grades, which as we now know, is what the Summit League is all about.

It's the website that has me most excited. Instead of the easy to find www.mid-con.com, those press releases displaying awesome grades can be found at www.thesummitleague.org. A dot org domain! I love it.

So all this happened at a press conference that by most accounts was attended by the three guys in the picture and one photographer. What a big day for the Mid-er- Summit League!

First Amendment Fallout

A few weeks ago, Don Imus filled the press with delightfully stupid remarks on which every one felt compelled to debate, comment, yell, scream, make inappropriate comparisons, and issue death threats. Eventually, CBS fired Imus, which the jock had to gleefully endure since he filed a lawsuit, and will someday win a few bazillion dollars for calling a group of basketball players a derogatory name. I'm not sure why he'll be rewarded for those comments with a victorious lawsuit, but the world is a topsy-turvey kinda place.

But now, the reprecussions from said incident are bouncing their way toward satellite radio. I have thus far resisted the evils for satellite radio because I fear that it will soon be the demise of local radio. Instead of a country full of djs, we will soon have JACK-FM broadcasting without any personality, or we'll have one guy speaking to everyone. Blah.

The upside of satellite radio is that it is outside of the completely unnecessary watch of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC likes to pretend that it can and should set the moral standard for every one, fining those it deems offensive and silencing the unpopular voice. You'll note that they did not have a peep to say about Don Imus and the system worked it's magic as the vocally offended managed to remove Imus without a government mandate. Yay for people policing themselves!

Back to the issue at hand, though, XM Satellite Radio has opted to begin policing itself. Moronic shock jocks Opie and Anthony who were kicked off of New York radio for sponsoring a contest that eventually led to a couple having sex in a church live on the air. Clearly not the kind of people you want your daughter dating.

Regardless, it cost them their jobs and they, much like Imus will eventually, cashed in on their newfound fame by signing a lucrative deal with satellite radio. Just last week, Opie and Anthony put a homeless guy on the air who promptly spewed forth sexual comments toward a handful of famous people. XM cared not for these remarks and suspened their bad boy DJs.

A commentary/newspiece (and boy the Torch still is the king of those) written over at CNN suggests that XM satellite, which operates outside of FCC regulation because it is a subscription service, decided to suspend the doofuses (doofi?) for more government reasons than would otherwise be the case.

The suspension also demonstrates how scared the satellite radio companies are of looking like the poster children for bad behavior at a time when XM and Sirius will depend on the goodwill of the government to green-light their merger.

So because Imus said naughty things, and because XM and Sirius want to merge, and because they want the government to smile on their combing forces, and because Opie and Anthony were at the wrong place at the wrong time, a non-government regulated company is restricting the free speech it so gladly advertised at its conception. I miss the first amendement.

It's Something

I typically take weekends off here at Wolfden V but rarely do I go a weekday without posting. Today I drove home from work after putting in 26 hours in the last 2 days trying to figure out what my Monday post would be about. With so many work hours, I haven't had an opportunity to experience anything unusual or sample the world. My world has been Walgreens, which I do my best not to write about since I try to not relive the retail world.

So, as mentioned, I was coming down the road racking my brain for a good topic. Nothing was coming to me as I looked at red brake lights. I needed inspiration. I needed a topic. I needed anything.

At that moment, I saw two ducks on the median of the road. My first reaction was that I was going to have a reenactment of the video I linked to a few days ago with momma and papa duck trying to cross the busy road with a fleet of babies. Instead, it was just mom and dad. And sex.

With a line of traffic a mile long, no one moving anywhere, two ducks just a few feet from my left tire decided to procreate. And there you have it.

This post is brought to you by the letters "K" and "P"

As mentioned previously, I enjoy the USA Today even if it means I read copies of the paper days after the actual events have happened. So just the other night, I was catching up on various sports stories when Becky begins giggling. She saw the above picture and observed, "His fly is open."

And now we know the secret to Brad Penny's successful outing: a little extra ventilation.

Now what did I just say about stealing?

You, dear readers, no doubt have noticed by now my enjoyment of the absurd news story. It's that imbalance of intelligence that fascinates me that humankind can put a man on the moon and at the same time resort to name calling (think ho-bag). Yet, I believe today I write my first comments on an absurd news story that occurred nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.

My beloved alma mater is Valparaiso University known for such things as a single basketball shot and, well, that's about it. But the surrounding area boasts Chicago, Gary, and the Indiana Dunes. The latter nearly became a lot more famous than "cheap hot spot for college students" as it is otherwise known.

"Stealing Lincoln's Body," a new book by Thomas J. Craughwell, brings to light an otherwise obscure plot to grave rob our 16th President. The idea was not some well thought out Confederacy revenge point that some might expect. Rather, a gentleman and his gang of thugs who were already being monitored for counterfeit money thought they could steal Lincoln's corpse, run off to the Indiana Dunes, and hold it their for ransom. They needed only get through a single padlock and some plaster of paris, and the gang would have the sarcophagus as there was no security and the tomb was above ground.

The problem arose when one of the gang happened to be an informant of the Secret Service who promptly notified higher powers of the shenanigans. A steak out ensued, shots were fired, the thieves got away, and in the dark the good guys shot at themselves. The good news is that Honest Abe stayed put and the Indiana Dunes were instead destined for obscurity.

Interestingly, the reason the kidnapping plot is little known is that it received very little coverage even in 1876 when it occurred. Why? Rutherford Hayes was eeking out victory over Samuel Tildon to become the nation's 19th President on this very night.

Thou Shall Not Steal

An Alabama judge came up with a wonderful way to punish shoplifters (see above). Those convicted of stealing from the local Wal-Mart had the option of 60 days in jail or standing with the sign expressing their moral shortcoming. I enjoy it when judges make up penalties that buck the conventional fine and minimal jail time.

A bystander thought that the punishment was cruel, which I assure you it is not. As a retailer, I'm all for embarrassing shoplifters and would encourage a return to the days of Hammurabi's Code. People from all walks of life steal, and it's done in large amounts every day. I don't work in a particularly "bad" neighborhood and in fact my Walgreens has one of the wealthiest populations of any in the district. Yet, not a day goes by when 7 or 8 empty boxes of something are found tucked behind another product. That's just what is left behind, as it's certainly plausible that most don't bother to leave any evidence behind opting to take package and all. For every one of those items that goes out the door, we have to sell another 20 to break even. Not to mention the time it takes to file a claim and change the computers counts to reorder the product now lost.

As such, I care not for thieves. I'm all for fingerprinting every individual that comes into the store so that every time I find an empty package, we can submit it to the FBI's data base. I've heard the Jean Valjean argument that people who steal take items that they need, and I can tell you that that is crap. If bread were going out the door to feed a hungry family, I might (stress might) be more understanding. But I can tell you that the most frequently ripped off items are candy bars, condoms, pregnancy tests, and make-up. You tell me which of those someone MUST have, and I'll buy it for them.

I applaud the efforts of Judge Kenneth Robertson Jr., but I might suggest that these people have to wear the sign and apologize and do community service and serve the jail time and pay the fine and get a tattoo with the same phrasing and lose a finger.

Singing and Dancing

It's not one of my favorite shows, but Becky enjoys the Dancing with the Stars series that ABC has thrown together for top notch ratings. As such, if I happen to not be working a particular Monday night, I am thrust into the world of B and C list celebrities attempting to ballroom dance. The show is about as good at it sounds but as a fan of American Idol I realize my room to criticize is razor thin.

Last night, though, the show was marred with all kinds of technical errors that I have to believe calls into question the integrity of the show. The typical formula involves the dance, the judge review, the actor interviewed backstage, and then the revealing of the judges' scores. So after the female judge reveals a score of 10 for Abraham Lincoln's waltz, the interviewer backstage interjects that judge keyed in a score of 9 and meant to say 9. Therefore the scoring is changed.

What? Meant 9 but raised a score card and said 10? Are we revisiting the French judge and Olympic figure skating?

This happened one other time I watched the show some time ago where the interviewer asked Thomas Jefferson how he felt about receiving a perfect 10. The issue here is that the judge's scores had not yet been revealed and the interviewer quickly back peddled stumbling through some cover-up about how judges key in their scores ahead of time. Key in to who? And by ahead of time you mean the 10 seconds that elapse in between the judge critique and the revealing of scores?

Throw in a production whoops of showing James Madison's phone number while Dwight Eisenhower was dancing and if you've got a cluster of crap. So in between the rounds of dancing, we've got scoring changes and technical glitches. Woo hoo! Then again I may just be bitter than John Ratzenberger got the boot last week.

Which brings me to the never controversial, always technically sound world of American Idol. Tonight we get the final four, which just so happens to be the last time I felt an attachment to the show. While I watch it every week, I have not been emotionally connected to a contestant since last season's final four when the brilliance of America decided to remove the far-more-talented-than-everyone-else-and-if-you-don't-believe-it-look-at-record-sales-for-those-final-four-now Chris Daughtry from the finals. Morons.

This season there has been a remarkable level of consistency among everyone, which contributes to the show's blandness. Melinda Dolittle sings at the same high level every week and is going to be in the final two. Blake Lewis has been the most unique performer dishing out weird mumbo-jumbo in reconfigured classics, and as a result will also be in the final two. Lakisha Jones performs very well but has a ridiculous attachment to singing songs that other American Idols are known for, thereby reducing her originality and range of song. Despite Simon Cowell's obvious attempt to push through the singer he wants by sorta making out with her a few weeks back, I think we may be witnessing the last of Jones' big ballads tonight. And finally Jordin Sparks who has been strong but unspectacular throughout will reach the Vonzell Solomon level of "wow, she was pretty good and vote her to the top 3 but seriously, she's not going to win."

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees is the talking head who offers two lines of profound advice and says everyone is great on this evening's show. He will also likely take up 4 minutes of Wednesday show and then be featured on various "you just lost" videos, shaking hands and hugging the contestant who most recently earned Daughtry's "Home." Upon doing some research, I found that Gibb bought that lakeside home of Johnny Cash's in Tennessee that burst into flames last month, a mere year and a half after he purchased it.