August 12, 2005

Today's Lunchtime Links

Mike Hollihan is one of Memphis' best, hard-working and most interesting bloggers. He also faces various obstacles as readers of his know well. One obstacle right now: His computer might be dying. You can't blog without a computer. He has a PayPal button. I've already hit it. You know what to do.

...Add Rob Huddleston to the list of bloggers who will be live-blogging Justice Sunday II in Nashville this weekend. Welcome to the 2 Live Crew, Rob.

...The NCAA's decision to ban Indian-themed team names and mascots from post-season tournament play is one of the dumber things that's happened recently. Taken to it's logical extreme, the University of Tennessee Volunteers can't participate in bowl games or March Madness or other NCAA events. Why? Because the state of Tennessee derives its name from an Indian word, Tanasi. If calling Florida State's teams "Seminoles" is offensive even though the Seminole tribe doesn't mind, surely that is offensive as well.

And Native Americans aren't the only folks that could be offended by various team names. Animal rights activists and PETA might be offended by all those teams named after animals, with their cartoon caricatures and goofy mascots, while satanists may be offended by the Duke "Blue Devils," and satanists and Christians alike might be offended by the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.

Like I said. Dumb. I'm glad FSU says it will Sioux. Er, I mean, sue.

Update: Bob Krumm points out in the comments the hypocritical inconsistency of the NCAA's decision: "Fighting Illini is offensive, but Fighting Irish is not!"

...Blake Wylie has an excellent post on the "unenumerated rights" in the Constitution.

...Ten Nashville-area political bloggers have signed up for this. We have room for two more. Right now the panel has more conservatives than liberals, so I wouldn't mind finding another couple of liberal bloggers to join in.

...Jeff Cornwall, whose blog's traffic is up 50 percent since Forbes.com named his blog one of the "best of the web" among small-biz blogs, is taking a week off from blogging to rest and refresh. That's not a bad idea.

But right now, lunch break is over. Back to the grindstone!

And then have a great weekend.