Random Thoughts

Just some Random Thoughts because I've been so busy with 3 tests this week.

I just read a great column here, writen by Bill Simmons, about Elgin Baylor. If you don't know who Elgin Baylor is, he was a Hall Of Fame basketball player for the Lakers, and up until this week the General Manager of the LA Clippers. Whats really interesting is how most people don't know about him and the struggles he went through as a basketball player and a black man in America. How he paved the way for basketball similar to Jackie Robinson.

"Elgin came into a league where guys shot running jump hooks and one-handed set shots. Teams routinely took 115 shots a game and made less than 40 percent of them. Nobody played above the rim except Russell; nobody dunked, and everyone played the same way: Rebound, run the floor, get a quick shot. Quantity over quality. That's what worked. Or so they thought. Because Elgin changed everything. He did things that nobody had ever seen before. He defied gravity. Elgin would drive from the left side, take off with the basketball, elevate, hang in the air, hang in the air, then release the ball after everyone else was already back on the ground. You could call him the godfather of hang time. You could call him the godfather of the "WOW!" play. You could point to his entrance into the league as the precise moment when basketball changed for the better. Along with Russell, Elgin turned a horizontal game into a vertical one."

I knew Elgin Baylor had been a great player, the Kobe Bryant of his generation, but not this revolutionary. But what stuck out to me was what he had to overcome.

"Elgin lived through some things during his career that we like to forget happened now. Lord knows how many racial slurs bounced off him, how many N-bombs were lobbed from the stands, how much prejudice he endured on a day-to-day basis as the league's signature black star. Russell bottled everything up and used it as fuel for the next game: He wouldn't suffer; his opponents would suffer. Oscar morphed into the angriest dude in the league, someone who screamed at his own teammates as much as the referees, a great player who played with an even greater chip on his shoulder. Elgin didn't have the same mean streak. He loved to joke with teammates. He never stopped talking. He loved life and loved playing basketball. He couldn't hide it. And so his body soaked up every ugly slight like a sponge."

The column goes on to give a real life account of the some of the racism Baylor encountered in his playing days, Including a story about a game in Charleston, West Virgina, where he was dehumanized by the same people he came to play in front of. This was a really chilling and well told story about a great basketball player who was classlessly fired in power struggle this week. It's a story of sports pioneer who overcame great adversity. One of the few good reads of my day today.

Another interesting, but scary thing I read was This, about Iceland on the brink of Bankruptcy. This was a pretty interesting story because Iceland is actually a really small country with a huge Economy. The Thing about Iceland is that its the only Hydrogen Economy in the world. They mostly use Geothermal, Hydroelctric, and Hydrogen energy over there, so it has a very low dependency on foreign Oil. The problem is that Iceland's Banks have taken on to much liabilities. This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Something Else that interested me was

this Penguin story. Now I'm not one of those PETA freaks who go around throwing blood at people, but this story really touched me. This story is basiclly about 100+ penguins who got stranded on a beach in Northeastern Brazil. They were helped and rescued by various agency working together and flown south by the Airforce. Its stories like this that actually give you some hope in humanity. I just thought these were Interesting