Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Scribbler's 2-for-1 Special: NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships


Although no team has received more attention in my 36 years of life than that team who wears burgundy and gold and plays in Landover, I used to be a bigger fan of NCAA Men's Division I Basketball during the 80s and 90s than the NFL.  Heck, I was even more willing to watch regular season games in college basketball than the NBA because between the energy of the crowds, the brewing rivalries between schools and the hunger and raw talent of the players, college hoops have always been a little more exciting.  Although the Georgetown Hoyas, the Maryland Terrapins and the Michigan Wolverines have always been my top three teams, respectively, there have always been "prisoner of the moment" teams on my list like the 1989-90 UNLV Running Rebels with Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, George Ackles and Greg Anthony; or even the 1990-91 Duke Blue Devils with Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill--who amazed me just being able to play ball with that hideously obstructive face mask after suffering a broken nose in a loss to Virginia.  So when March Madness would roll around, it was pretty much "don't even look at me and think we're going to have a meaningful conversation" time.  So in honor of the upcoming title game next Monday, I've decided to do a "Rave & Favorite Five" of the the most memorable and/or most personal championship games in my lifetime.  Oh, and it happens to be the "11th Hour Post of the Week", too, so you're welcome once again...

The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 3


As a tenth grader at School Without Walls Senior High School in Northwest D.C., my exceptionally brilliant humanities teacher steered us away from generic textbooks and encouraged us to consult primary source information first when it came to understanding social, political and historical events.  Her thinking was that general and secondary sources allowed for less detail and more cultural bias whereas primary source information was directly from the people with the experience(s) being researched.  Apparently, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump doesn't believe in that as he is a constant violator of former New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs coach Herman Edwards' "Don't Hit Send" warning.  Whether it's via social media or just opening his mouth, Trump says whatever he wants whenever he desires without any defendable form of mental preparedness, verification or fact checking until someone corrects him.  As problematic as this is for a presidential candidate, he is representative of an even larger dilemma in American society: taking information as presented from questionable sources to make an argument without enough supporting facts from more reliable sources.  Hence, in this third installment of "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I will get into Trump potentially being the poster child of America's miseducation...