Batting Cage Dreams

The most popular item in today's NY Times Week in Review is a follow-up story on the relationship between birth order and IQ, including sidebar quiz on celebrity birth order. As Good As News could say - "ho-hum, we did this a week ago, and today's Time's story doesn't even cover confused birth order of Cheney as triplet child (with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia) of Darth Vader" - but this is not our way. Instead - Thank you NY Times for letting us know Cheney is the eldest, and thank you again for including Sacha Baron Cohen in the quiz as a youngest. Sacha seems like the kind of guy who had to go to extremes to get attention at home, older siblings brain surgeon, concert pianist and tortured but brilliant poet so Sacha took what was left?

Massive kudos to Elizabeth Edwards for belated counterattack on Ann Coulter. Coulter one of many blowhards, not all conservative, who bray incessantly with complete disregard for the facts. Question is why does any serious media outlet give them a platform. Coulter a special case because she discovered that vicious, unprovoked and tasteless personal attacks would generate publicity and sell books and rode a cycle of attack and counterattack to a special place all her own in the dark world of punditry. Now Elizabeth Edwards calls Coulter out with a simple, dignified challenge based on the facts, and Coulter is helpless. Even Coulter understands she can't win by slinging mud at target with inoperable cancer, but take away mud slinging and Coulter has no game left. I do not wish inoperable cancer on anyone- period- but maybe Keith Olbermann could just pretend to be a cancer victim. Olbermann's combination of sarcasm and damning facts is already making Bill O'Reilly's life miserable, cancer would put Olbermann over the top.

The story on life in a batting cage brought back a great memory of taking my daughter to the batting cages. As a twelve year old she waited on line for the fast pitch machine, a line that was otherwise populated with adult males eager to hit and annoyed that this girl was wasting their time. The line moved slowly, my daughter finally got her turn. Soon she was ripping line drive after line drive right back at the pitching machine as her sceptical line mates broke the line and surrounded the cage, jaws sagging. Note to Times - please run a story on batting cages at least once a year.

Cheney Quiz

First, I promise a long break before I post anything that has anything to do with taxes again. I had to do research and then I kept thinking of edits all day long, it was too much like work.

I know my legions of reader thirst for a post on South America, but once again a thorough review of the NY Times shows no coverage. But for the occasional eruption of Mount Hugo one might think the entire continent was submerged, the onset of the global warming apocalypse.

So, we will settle for a short quiz suggested by page 1 headlines. We now know that an eldest child has an IQ three points higher, on average, than younger siblings but the eldest may be less adventurous, less prone to radical innovation. We also know that Dick Cheney's handling of official records led to questions from the cognizant oversight office - as we all know that would be.....the National Archives, Security Oversight Office (NASOO). My guess is that NASOO officials (Nassooers) were willing to look the other way when the Vice President classified every single document (witness Freedom of Information Act releases with 98% of text redacted) but they finally tried to draw the line when Cheney demanded Top Secret classification for his toe nail clippings. Enraged, Cheney's office resisted any further oversight. The courageous Nassooers objected and Dick went outside the box with a bold move to eliminate NASOO and exile the brave Nassooers to the darkness outside the beltway.

The quiz? Is Cheney the eldest - he was admitted to Yale (albeit as the only applicant from Wyoming and one who dropped out after a year) and met with much success as a conventional legislator and staffer early in his career - or is he a younger sibling - massive counterattack on unsuspecting Nassooers suggests potential for radical innovation. Imaginative none of the above answers (triplet son of Darth Vader born simultaneously with Luke and Leia) will be accepted.