Growing older

Ha! My friend shared a funny and insightful perspective on growing older today.

Neither of us had shaved, and he remarked on a column he had once read. The writer said that he knew he was getting older because when he didn't shave, his stubble no longer looked cool; he just looked like a wino.

You Are the Message

Great quote I heard at Rolling Hills Covenant Church this week:

"The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person."

-Robert Oppenheimer

Bruins Evolve in Game to Beat a Better Team

Here it is again - the inner game. You can do a lot when you believe in yourself.

"'We're going to face teams that are better than us, as far as on paper,' UCLA's Justin London said. 'But nothing replaces heart — and we've got lots of heart.'"

The New Music Download Battle

Another interesting battle over music downloading - this time not about piracy, but about the pricing of Apple's popular iTunes. Record companies are putting pressure on Apple to charge more than 99cents a song.

Here's what John C. Dvorak at PC Magazine says:

"The goal is to kill iTunes and any online music service not directly owned by a label. The record companies don't like these systems for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they work, proving that downloading music was a good idea from the beginning. I'm sure that still irks them, since it represents a decade-old 'I told you so!'"

It also reminds me of another old saying - killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Bruins Upset Bears in Rose Bowl Brawl

I was following this by internet and it was exciting.

Down 14-0, 27-14, 40-28, somehow UCLA kept coming back and finally won.

Cal outgained them by nearly 200 yards. They ran at will and had two runners with over 100 yards rushing each. Their freshman receiver had over 150 yards.

Meanwhile, UCLA's star receiver had one catch for 6 yards and star runner had 16 rushes for 64 yards.

Yet UCLA won and beat the spread (they were a 1-1/2 point favorite)!

A weak defensive line, a suspect offensive line, yet a lot of poise and maturity and a will to win.

A timid and tepid pick by Mona Charen

Interesting statistic mentioned here for all of us who moan about partisan politics:

"I heard an NPR host a couple of weeks ago describing the nomination process as 'polarized.' Some professor agreed that liberals vote only for liberals and conservatives only for conservatives. Nope. Conservative senators have, for the most part, voted to confirm liberal justices. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a vote of 96-3. Justice Stephen Breyer was approved by a vote of 87-9."

Retreat by Charles Krauthammer

"For a man whose presidency is marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness."

Good line from an opinion piece about President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. It is disappointing to me that he picked a political ally rather than a judicial expert. As George Will said in another opinion piece, if 100 experts were asked to choose their 10 top Supreme Court prospects, she would not be named in any of the 1,000 spots on the list.

White Sox Top Red Sox 5-3, Sweep Series

I'm a hometown fan - Dodgers and Angels all the way!

But it's hard not to cheer for such a hard-luck team as the White Sox, or the Red Sox last season.

The Angels will beat the Yankees and face the White Sox in the American League Championship Series to see who gets to the World Series. Whom to cheer for?

Ah, this is where sports becomes so fun - waiting for those magical moments when heroes emerge and legends are made.

The 400 Richest Americans

Now look at this list. 4 of the top 5 are technology fortunes, and 5 of the top 10 are from one family.

How things change and yet stay the same.

1 William H. Gates
2 Warren E. Buffett
3 Paul G. Allen
4 Michael Dell
5 Lawrence Ellison
6 Christy Walton
7 Jim C. Walton
8 S. Robson Walton
9 Alice L. Walton
10 Helen R. Walton

Top Movies

I love lists. All kinds of lists. To-do lists, popularity lists, lists of statistics.

This is a list of imdb.com's top 250 movies as voted by members.

What are your top movies? Mine (as I try to gauge their impact on my life, not necessarily the movies I would most like to watch):

1. Brother Sun, Sister Moon
2. Groundhog Day
3. It's A Wonderful Life
4. The Wizard of Oz
5. Star Wars
6. The Deer Hunter
7. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
8. The Princess Bride
9. Rocky
10. Ordinary People
11. Lawrence of Arabia
12. Young Frankenstein
13. A Shot in the Dark
14. Saving Private Ryan
15. The Incredibles
16. 2001: A Space Odyssey
17. Forrest Gump
18. Patton
19. Chariots of Fire
20. The Seven Samurai
21. To Kill A Mockingbird
22. The Bridge on the River Kwai
23. The Great Escape
24. How the West Was Won
25. Tora! Tora! Tora!
26. Terminator
27. The Matrix
28. Gone With the Wind
29. Raiders of the Lost Ark
30. The Sons of Katie Elder
31. White Christmas
32. Little Big Man
33. True Grit
34. Twelve Angry Men
35. The Godfather
36. The Sting
37. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
38. Glory
39. The Killing Fields
40. The Parent Trap

Pacific 10 Makes Grade

I love articles like this that cross disciplines - in this case, testing the intelligence of football players.

Of course, it helps that it demonstrates the superior intelligence of UCLA student-athletes.