A Layman's Look

Well, here we are in the off-season for the NFL and all teams are heading towards free agency and the draft, perpetually preparing for bettering the roster and the team.  I read an interesting article recently that the Dallas Cowboys have actually drafted more defensive players than offensive players in recent drafts.  They have been spending their premium picks, however, on offense.  Now it seems to be time to reverse that trend and start building the defensive front. Something important to keep in mind as we prepare for 2017 is that the Cowboys drafted two young defenders last year who never saw the field.  One, Charles Tapper, shows great speed and seems to have a pretty high ceiling as a DE in Dallas's 4-3, but it remains to be seen if he will live up to the hopes and expectations from the coaches and front office.  He was a fourth round pick last year, so chances are good that he could materialize and be a difference-maker on this defense. The other pla...

I just finished and published the article about how the SBC can be an instructor for the Democratic Party in how they act and react to moves made by the GOP.  I just want to quote David Leonhardt here as support for my sentiments and link you to his article in the NY Times. "I understand that all of these options sound aggressive and partisan, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to make such an argument.  But Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one.  The only thing worse than the system the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied." Check out his article  here .

When I was a boy, something important happened in the Southern Baptist Convention.  Three men got together and devised a plan to gain control of the leadership of the convention.  As far as I know there was nothing that they did which was technically out of bounds as seen through the SBC Constitution and bylaws, but part of what they did was definitely ethically questionable. I don't know how it is today, but at the time, the president of the SBC could appoint a certain number of people, unopposed, each year to leadership positions.   That wasn't generally a problem since the leadership of the SBC shifted from conservative to moderate on a regular basis.  These three men, however, and here comes the questionable part, realized that if they had enough people present to elect their candidate for the presidency at the opening meeting of the convention, and then have those people leave before the next sessions began the next day, they could create a large enough mass o...

Well it seems that once-candidate Trump's strategy of throwing up anything he sees fit, factual or otherwise, just to pollute the air and make it harder to see what is being planned and/or done is finally causing a reassessment of means of combating said strategy.  Journalists that I have seen in the last few days seem to be trying new approaches including The New York Times  implementing footnotes to present the factual version of the President's statement, and Rachel Maddow beginning, it seems, to sidestep the lies and look behind the cloud at what is being done on the ground. It is a bit like herding cats, isn't it?  They run all over the place, are completely independently minded, become harder to catch the more they are chased, and continually take you further and further from what's most important.  It seems to me that these approaches are sound.  It seems to me that allowing the lies to run off on their own steam and not chase them, thus giving them mor...

There are so many things to say, so many things that have been running through my mind over the last two-and-a-half months.  My mind feels a bit like responsible journalists must feel in their attempts to corral the untruths and contradictions foisted upon us during the presidential campaign.  There's so much frustration noise that I can't seem to focus in on one thing.  But I shall try! I don't know about anyone else, but I went to bed upset and I woke up mad. I don't usually put much stock in horoscopes, but I've always found it interesting that I have such a desire for things to be fair, and I happen to be a Libra which, in case you don't know, is symbolized by a set of scales in astrology. Fairness.  Balance. That's one of the wonderful things about a democracy, is it not?  The majority will carry the day and we will move forwarded guided by the ideas and ideals shared by more than 50% of our fellow Americans.  And yet, here we sit, on January 2...

Yesterday I was in a union meeting.  Among other things, a brief discussion was had about the evolution of individual contracts versus group contracts in particular among ballet and theater companies, not necessarily on the opera side of things.  It was pointed out that the movement began primarily because more and more dancers wanted to be seen as soloists in the troupe rather than "ensemble dancers", and they wanted to negotiate their own contracts accordingly.  Over time that has led to less negotiating power for dancers, ultimately developing into much lower pay, often the legal minimum salary for dancers. That led me to connect the dots between that devolution of solidarity in the ranks of ballet troupes where each had been a part of the braided fabric, strong and durable, to the political devolution we're starting to see around the world.  For some time now, countries have been murmuring about wanting out of the EU.  Granted, there are positives and nega...

So, here I sit just killing a little time after reading articles about the Dallas Cowboys.  I took a few minutes to entertain other people's thoughts on the 2017 NFL Draft and am intrigued by several things, but one in particular stands out to me and I wanted to jot it down here and now. I know that the Browns are currently 0-for-2016, but they've been within one score in four of their games this year, and within two scores in four others, and there is good young talent there.  So, I am going to say here and now that the NFL better look out for them next season.  As long as they do well with their picks in 2017, they will be an incredibly talented group next year.  With FIVE picks in the top 65 of the draft they could possibly wind up with four or five first-round talents, depending on slippage and preferences of other teams.  So, I'm just saying it here, mid-December 2016, watch out for the 2017 Cleveland Browns! Stranger things have happened! (see Election...