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Showing posts from June, 2007

The Sopranos

If the entire Sopranos series was the world series... Game 1 – It was a subway series, everyone favorite type of game, Yankees vs Mets. Well I missed the first few innings, but everyone called me, telling how great a game it was, and so I switched in on. And they were right, it was superb. Plays were executed perfectly, rivalries and personalities dominated. So what if Joe Torre came out every other inning to talk to Roger Clemens about his feeling; the game was filled in triple plays, home runs, in even Yankee outfielder, Melky Cabrera decided to switch teams in the 8 th inning, only to get hit by a Clemens pick two innings later. Yankees win 6-5. Game 2 – Another great matchup, Pedro Martinez vs Andy Petite. Pedro is pitching a perfect game, getting some great defensive plays. I just can’t take my eyes off the TV. I relish every inning. Pedro loses the perfect game in the ninth when his wife distracts him Derrick Jeter gets a cheap bunt hit. Pedro than hits the next two b

Lipka

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My whole life I thought that “Lipka” was a Polish for lemon tree. Well, that is close to true, but a random Wikipedia search (and some follow up) found that Lipka was much more. First, Lipka is a village in Poland in wielkopolska province, near Zlotow city. It is the center of a rural commune in Zlotow County. Lipka has approximately 2,300 inhabitants. Here is a nice map of the area. http://www.lipka.pnet.pl/mapa.gif History: - Between 1772-1918 year under the administration department of the Prussian seizure. - From 1919-1945 (after the Versailles regulation) it was ruled by the Germans and was called Linde. - In 1945, after WW2, it became part of Poland. Furthermore, Lipka has an excellent website, http://www.lipka.pnet.pl/. I wonder if there are others with the last name Lipka running around the village; maybe there are all named Lipka; or did my family take this name the same way the Corleone’s did. Maybe if I went back they would be made king, maybe not. But they would have my nam

Ethics and the Political Party

During a public policy ethics class at Columbia, we listed several unethical offspring of the democracy. Of course there were the ones you would expect, like corruption, but one you might not expect was the very existence of political parties. Political parties are, by their nature, unethical, because of they remove one’s own believes and replace it with that of the party (and the party bureaucracy). Nothing could have demonstrated this more clearly than during the republican convention when an audience member asked “what is the most important moral issue in the county?”. A few candidates answered, either citing the right to life (for all people, not just those in the womb) or the war on terror. One candidate said the most pressing moral issue was singular the protection on unborn babies. He was immediate asked if he would support Rudy Giuliani (who is the only pro-choice candidate) if he was the republican nominee. The candidate tried to side-step the answer saying the r