wolverines travel schedule

The Wolverines won’t be traveling much this fall when they take the football field. Four away games in all including: Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It looks like everyone will be coming to the Big House.

those 2003 tigers

This is for all of those baseball fans out there. Do you remember the 2003 season? Probably not, unless you are a Detroit Tigers fan. That year the Tigers went 43-119 almost becoming the worst team in baseball history. Luckily for the Tigers they won their last two games of the season to become merely the second worst team ever. Inspired by the site http://www.flipflopflyin.com/ (weird name cool site) and its chart on the 1986 Mets World Championship, I’ve created a little chart showing the team that was assembled for the 2003 season to never become great.

(click to enlarge)

just business

The question was razed today – what’s the point of marriage after the age of forty. With no future of children, it was brought up that the only reason would be for business – cheaper insurance. People called in and affirmed that indeed there is no good reason. Which raises a larger question: why get married at all?

The radio station, which I listen to everyday on the way to work, has been perplexed by the idea of marriage lately. It was topped off today by asking the question: why even be married? Other questions have included: do you like spending time with you family? The whole idea of marriage has been mocked and rendered useless, culminating with the question: do you even like your wife?

Of course that’s not the only place that underestimates the idea of marriage. In the February issue of Real Simple the statement was made that your spouse shouldn’t be your best friend. Included in the statement was a quotation from a “sociologist”: “I agree. I think you’re asking a lot of your marriage to have the level of confidentiality, truthfulness, and disclosure that a best friendship has. Your marriage can fulfill only so many roles.”

It seems that indeed the radio and the “sociologist” have come to an agreement that a marriage is just a legal business transaction. All sacredness of the ceremony, life-time meaning, love, friendship and commitment are left by the wayside as mere foolishness.

It’s become a sad day. Of course there are exceptions. But this is a mainstream radio station and a mainstream magazine. It’s become a common view and way of life – that marriage is no longer a union, but just business.

stewardship of a paid education: part 1

This is part one of a two day blog on an article I read from Real Simple magazine. In the article a woman was interviewed and asked how much money, total, she would need for the rest of her life. The answer to that question and the bulk of the article will be tomorrow. For today I am just going to write on one part of the article. In the article she stated that she would want $100,000 to go toward her child’s education. (A.K.A. her child’s education is paid for. They are granted at least a free bachelors’ degree in life.)

Now being asked the question how much money would you need to live on for the rest of your life, of course you would include your child’s education into the mix. In reality, though, almost everyone has to earn their own money. In turn when this question is brought to mind in real life, should we be paying for our children’s education?

What does it do to a child when everything is paid for including one of the most prized assets someone can have: a college education? I myself have a Bachelors’ and Masters degree. Along with a trail of college loans to be paid off. That trail got me up for 8:00 AM classes. It made me go to night classes when I would rather be at the University basketball game. It made me appreciate the cost of books and the cost of food. But what if that was all paid for. I wonder how many 8:00 AM classes I would have missed or how many basketball games I would have gone to?

Would the luxury of free school made me not appreciate it as much? In general when someone’s education is paid for is the appreciation there? Is there good stewardship in having a free education? Is it teaching our children to live in the real world when that happens? When someone else has to pay for it? I’m not sure if there has ever been a study on this before, and I don’t have the means (a University Library) to find out. Just thinking about it though: 1) it would be hard to determine, and 2) would the test results come out the way I think they would.

When we talk about stewardship if we compare a student with a free education to a student that had to pay for their education (almost all of the time) the person that had to pay is going to have more debt - whether school or credit card. So, already stewardship may be screwed. Maybe spending habits could be looked at, though. And savings accounts probably are skewed too. A person who doesn’t have to pay for college has a better ability to build a savings account.
What about overall degree. Well, if someone has a free education they may have a better ability to have a bigger and better degree where someone paying for all of their education may only be able to afford a community college, an associate’s degree, or a smaller, less powerful college.
And what about appreciation? Is there a way to study this? It’s easy to mark on a survey when asked “Do you appreciate the free education you received?” Yes. In reality, though, does the person really appreciate and understand what it means to receive it and understand what people go through to have the same education?

My personal history, in undergrad and graduate school, would suggest that indeed people whose education is paid for by their parents or from a scholarship from sports, etcetera are not as appreciative. Their understanding and stewardship of money are often twisted and blind, and often marks of superiority are there. Of course there are plenty of exceptions. Many of the exceptions that I saw were in undergrad - in students who grew up with no chance of going to college and were given a scholarship because of their low socio-economic status and given a chance. In the whole though I wonder if this is just an experience I have seen, or is universally true.

a walk through the neighborhoods

I walked to downtown last weekend. It’s about an eleven mile walk. Not really a far distance when you can drive or even bike. But, when you walk – yeah it’s a long distance. It was a nice sunny Saturday morning and afternoon. The temperature was probably around the mid 80s. A little hot, especially since it has been such a cold summer. We were going to walk the lakeshore to downtown but then decided that we walk downtown under the shade of the trees and we could keep cooler that way. It worked. Couldn’t have done that in the ‘burbs. We packed lightly for the walk – two water bottles and some granola bars and headed out the door.

We went east for a little bit and then followed streets going south until we arrived downtown. We followed mainly residential streets and stayed away from the main thoroughfares with all the loud traffic. We were able to do this for most of the way. We got to see several neighborhoods this way and got an eclectic feel of Chicago that few people ever get in at one time. It was great to see all the different houses, apartments, and condos, and to take in the different personality of each neighborhood.

We were able to walk that far without getting too tired. Well, at least until we got home and realized we had major blisters and aches in our legs. It was well worth the experience of being able to walk downtown and really see what Chicago is for one last time.

hummers

The hummingbird is really small – like really small. And their nest? It’s small, too. In a recent discussion over the weekend over how big a hummingbird feeder is, no one could quite figure out how big the nest was. Well, YouTube comes through. Below is a (lengthy) video of a hummingbird (and babies) and its nest. Quite fascinating. Take a minute to watch a little bit.

i'm not so sure about silver suits and flying cars

Have you ever seen a futuristic movie? I’m not talking about Star Wars or Star Trek. That’s like really future where Earth is no longer inhabitable because of all the trash so everyone had to leave for space. No, I’m just talking about the near future where everyone has a flying car and wears a silver suit.

It’s kind of funny to imagine the world in the future. To think that what we think as progression is flying cars and silver jump suits. The only thing though is that I don’t think in the future everyone is going to be wearing silver jumps suits. And I’m really not keen on everyone having a flying car.

Silver jump suits, really? That’s a step back in the fashion world. That would be like men going back to the short-shorts of the 1980’s. It’s just not going to happen. Has silver ever been a color of choice for clothing? I mean it works for jewelry and cars, but not clothing. Plus, when did everyone start wanting to wear the same exact thing as everyone else? Even if people did have to go to space suits that happen to be silver (which does not seem too far a stretch when you think about what astronauts wear) you’d think Nike or someone would create a line for people to have different suits.

What about flying cars? Sure it would be great for the economy. I mean car companies would have to create new plants and be able to put out a whole new product that everyone would want. Think of the job possibilities. It’s similar to the whole green energy market that is right now trying to be created. Besides it being good for the economy (or at least I imagine it would be), it would just be really cool to fly everywhere. Instead of being restricted by roads you could fly in a direct path to your destination. It would be faster, easier, and there would be no traffic jams. Right?

I’m not so sure flying cars should ever be a possibility, at least for everyone. Driving is already dangerous enough: road rage, people driving drunk, traffic jams, city traffic, etcetera. Imagine adding flying into the mix. I don’t want to know what a drunk person driving a flying car could do to the world. I don’t want to know what cars going every which way over houses and buildings and so on would do. And that’s how it would be, right? No more roads, no more restrictions. People could fly over whatever they wanted. It could try to be restricted, but why would someone sit behind another flying car when they can just go above them, below them, or any which way to their destination. Imagine what commuting would look like. Without roads, flying would be chaos. The roads would looks less like a go-cart track and more like bumper cars.
But, what if flying was only restricted to a few - say emergency vehicles. Fire trucks could arrive at fires faster. Ambulances could get to a crash faster. And police could get to a robbery faster. In a world with flying cars I am not sure if is safe enough for this world to handle, but it could be a great resource for helping others.

travel anyone?