Avid paleontology fans — and I know there are thousands of you reading this column right now — may have taken note of the discovery recently of what scientists are calling a fossilized jawbone fragment from a giant, prehistoric, clam-eating shark known as Ptychodus mortoni. The handful of you out there who aren’t avid paleontology fans might have missed this little news tidbit, but it’s something that I believe merits further discussion. Read More »
You want to talk about stupid? At this very moment I’m sitting in bed at a friend’s house in Columbia, Mo., less than halfway through a 2,000-mile drive that will eventually take me from Basalt to Washington, D.C., to New Jersey and finally Connecticut.
Am I saying it’s stupid to drive across the country? Well, yes, but that’s not what’s making my particular trek so imbecilic. Read More »
There are more than 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, an astounding figure that works out to about 51 per country. Plus, you have to figure that there aren’t a lot of saints coming out of, say, China or Iran or any country with a “stan” in its name, so we can assume the saints-per-country ratio is even higher in places that actually have Catholics, right?
Yet somehow just two of those saints, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Katherine Drexel, were born on American soil. Only Drexel was born after the United States declared independence. Read More »
I’ve always sort of admired Oklahoma for having a realistic self-image. Whereas Kansas deludes itself with a slogan like, “Land of Ahhs,” Oklahoma has always been honest, telling us simply that “Oklahoma is OK.” Not great, not bad, but OK. I’ve never been to Oklahoma and have no immediate or long-term plans to rectify that situation, but I’m guessing that’s a fair appraisal of the Sooner State.
I have, however, been to Kansas, and as I drove for what seemed like thousands of miles through the flat, featureless wheat fields, I did not utter a single “ah” that wasn’t immediately followed by a vigorous “choo!” Kansas doesn’t exactly inspire that sort of enthusiasm. Read More »
To the many vocal champions of the Big 12 out in these parts, it may come as a surprise to know that there was a time in the not-so-distant past when the Big East was college basketball. Oh, I know all the Dicks and Diggers have been telling us for some time that the Midwest is the center of the roundball universe, but it wasn’t always so.
Georgetown, behind junior center Patrick Ewing, won the national championship in 1984 after losing in the final game two years earlier to the once-in-a-lifetime North Carolina triumvirate of Perkins, Worthy and Jordan. Read More »