We return to our discussion of interesting days on the calendar, and this time we are joined by, apparently, a lot of people in the UAE. The National has done an 11-11-11 story for Friday (November 11, 2011) noting how many weddings and big events have been scheduled for the day, including Caesarian sections so […]

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Joe Paterno, fired tonight by the Penn State board of trustees. He had to be. No coming back from this. The scandal surrounding the alleged child-molestation incidents involving the former Penn State defensive coordinator … well, “radioactive” was the first word that came to mind and it still seems best. All Penn State could do […]

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What. A. Mess. I have no special insights-gained-from-personal-experience … with Joe Paterno or Penn State. I may have been in the same room with the 84-year-old football coach once or twice (the 1995 Rose Bowl would be the best bet), but that’s it. Never been to the Penn State campus, and I can think of […]

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While killing out spam that clogs my email, I came across one that bothers me more than the usual appeals to the Seven Deadly Sins. Fake diplomas. And I quote:

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Our first two years here … we must have worked on the first day of Eid Al Adha, one of the biggest holidays of the year. Because we bumped into several noteworthy (for a non-Muslim expat) concepts in the course of things today.

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If you had asked the Young Me, back in 1969, if man would have walked on Mars by the year 2011, I would have said, “For sure.” If we could put men on the moon in 1969, less than a decade after we decided it was a good idea, we ought to have a colony […]

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Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake. No question. It was about this time a year ago that a couple of goats and perhaps a sheep appeared in the long narrow park that runs between our home and the busy highway. Kids were standing around the creatures, petting and patting them, and the goats and sheep […]

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The UAE has millions of expats. About 85 percent of the population of 8 million comes from outside the country, and that works out to about 7 million foreigners, compared to 1 million citizens. What is curious about the UAE, however, is how all those foreigners tend to come from a limited number of countries. […]

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Each fall, an organization known as Futbol de Primera polls journalists to determine the best U.S. national team player of that calendar year. (For years, they gave away a Honda automobile to the winner; that no longer appears to be the case.) The Futbol de Primera (formerly Honda) award is better than the U.S. Soccer […]

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It is being reported tonight that Frank McCourt has agreed to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers. Thank goodness. Of course, he will try to claim the team is worth more than $1 billion (he paid $421 million eight years ago), which could complicate matters. The Dodgers probably have appreciated in value, no thanks to the […]

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