evanmorris.com

TownOnline.com - Sports: Punting, passing and kicking their way to glory

On the boys side, Evan Morris took first place in the 10 to 11-year-old division, while Ryan Mahoney placed third in the 8 to 9-year-old age group.

See, this is weird. I was in my 20s before I met anyone else named "Evan." I even had a teacher in grade school once insist that I was confused and my name must actually be "Kevin." Almost every teacher pronounced my name "Evon" on the first day of class, even in college.

I was named, btw, for my maternal great-grandfather, Col. Evan Nathanael Jones, a stalwart abolitionist. My full name is Evan Nathanael Charles William Morris. What can I say? I was the last of six kids and there were names left over.

Anyway, I actually enjoyed being, at least locally, unique in the moniker department. It drew folks' attention away from my strangely-shaped ears.

In the mid-90s I ran into one other Evan Morris, I think from California, on usenet.

Then Bruce Springsteen named his kid Evan.

Soon thereafter, I heard mothers calling "Evan!" in malls and supermarkets. My name had become a yuppie fad.

According to this, Evan was ranked the 427th most popular male baby name in the 1950s. As of 2005, it's 38th.

And now I'm told it's becoming a popular girls' name. Bizarre. It's the Welsh equivalent of "John," incidentally, first cousin of "Ian."

Anyway, my Google Alert for "Evan Morris" churns out a least one not-me hit per day.

Hmmph. Sic transit novelty.

But hey, I've got the domain. Maybe one of those little trust-fund Evan Morrises will grow up prepared to pay big bucks for it. It's a better bet than Social Security.

Posted by evan at 12:56 AM | Permalink

The Columbus Dispatch

UnitedHealth’s greed is generating profits
Friday, October 27, 2006

I am sure most Dispatch readers will agree with my disgust in seeing that William McGuire, the recently dismissed chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, will be paid $5.1 million per year for the rest of his life ("Ex-UnitedHealth chief set for life," Oct. 17). He will also be given a lump sum of $6.5 million, as well as holding stock options worth $1.78 billion!

I am a small-business owner and a licensed orthotist and prosthetist. We design, manufacture and fit orthotic devices (braces) and prostheses (artificial limbs) as prescribed by physicians. Our clients are typically older citizens on fixed incomes who have suffered amputations. The devices they rely on are very expensive and must be maintained to provide comfort and function.

Approximately two years ago, United Healthcare, the company’s Ohio subsidiary, instituted a yearly maximum benefit for prosthetic and orthotic care of $2,500 for all groups in Ohio with fewer than 50 employees. This is virtually all of "small business," the backbone of the American economy.

We have all read or seen stories of modern technology in prosthetics and orthotics. The recent reports of care being provided to the injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are only one example of the breakthroughs. Some of these prostheses can cost $50,000 or more but provide increased comfort, function and abilities for the user, as well as enhancing the quality of their lives. Even a "conventional" above-the-knee prosthesis costs $15,000 to $20,000. How is a working citizen going to afford the difference between the cost of these services and the paltry limit on coverage being provided to Ohio small businesses who insure with United Healthcare? In addition to the benefits cap, United Healthcare reimburses providers 35 percent below the level that Medicare recipients receive. This is, by the way, 20 percent less than Ohio Medicaid and is often below the provider’s cost to deliver the service.

To make matters worse, United Healthcare has ruthlessly increased the health-insurance premiums yearly, without regard to the effect it has on small business.

It is no wonder that United Healthcare has recorded record profits over the past few years.

And on a final note, a nuclear aircraft carrier costs far less than the value of McGuire’s stock options.

When will we wake up to this kind of greed and say no to companies that operate like this?

RONALD KIDD

Grove City

Posted by evan at 3:55 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Our very own Katherine Harris, but twice as stupid and crazy as a bedbug to boot:

The Enquirer - Schmidt angry to see 'cowards' speech in TV ad

Rep. Jean Schmidt blasted Democrat Victoria Wulsin on Wednesday for allegedly breaking a U.S. House rule that prohibits using the broadcast of House floor proceedings in campaign ads.

"Her continued violation will land her in serious trouble with the House Ethics Committee," Schmidt's spokesman Matt Perin said in a release, referring to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which the release mistakenly referred to elsewhere as the "House Committee on Official Standards and Conduct."

Besides those errors, there's just one more tiny problem: Wulsin, who is challenging Schmidt in the 2nd District, is not a member of the House. Not yet anyway.

Wulsin's new ad shows Schmidt telling Democratic Rep. John Murtha that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

Schmidt, a Miami Township Republican, was booed after her Nov. 18, 2005, speech. It's against House rules to refer to another lawmaker by name or to disparage him on the House floor.

"The only person in this race who has broken House rules is Jean Schmidt," Wulsin spokesman Ady Barkan said. "If she didn't want people to see this ad, then she shouldn't have given that speech."

Posted by evan at 1:03 AM | Permalink

Lauer on Limbaugh's Michael J. Fox attacks: "Didn't Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people were privately thinking?"

On the October 26 edition of NBC's Today, co-host Matt Lauer suggested that when nationally syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh "said [that] perhaps [actor] Michael J. Fox was exaggerating or faking these effects of Parkinson's disease" in a recent campaign ad for Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, Limbaugh was "just say[ing] what a lot of people were privately thinking." Lauer added that "if Michael Fox goes out there politically and puts himself in the fray, he has to expect to be taken to account."

This evening, Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News, interviewing Michael J. Fox, asked (I'm paraphrasing): "Wouldn't it have been better to wait to shoot the ad when you weren't shaking so much?"

Gee, Katie, wouldn't it have been better for CBS to hire somebody with some simple human decency?

Update from the transcript:

KC: Could you have waited to do that ad when you had less dyskinesia, for example?

MF: Well, when do you know that’s going to be? You don’t know when that’s going to be….Funny, my mother was visiting that day, was in the backroom and she was saying throughout the filming of it -- and she was talking to my friends back there-- and she was saying "he's trying so hard to be still" and so she was the one actually when the comments were made, she was the only who was really angry and she said "I can’t even see straight." I said ‘Mom, just relax, it’s okay, don't worry about it. But, it’s just not that simple. That’s why we're doing this. Not only people with Parkinson’s. People who have spinal cord injuries. People who have the ticking clock of ALS, where they waste away, kids who are born with juvenile diabetes, I mean, potentially there’s answers for those people and we're not interested in being exhibitionists with our symptoms or asking for pity or anything else. We're just resolved to get moving with this science. It’s been a long time. It’s not a time neutral observation. It’s not something we can sit back and abstractly talk about. While people are talking about it, there are people attached to this issue, which is one of the reasons I did this. It’s not necessarily the most comfortable thing for me to do and necessarily what I want to be doing. I’ve got 4 kids. I like to be spending time with them, but if it takes seeing a face that people recognize and say ‘hey, I know that guy,’ maybe they'll realize that they know other people. There's 100 million Americans that are either touched by an incurable illness, or know somebody who has incurable illness, or love somebody who has incurable illness. There’s 100 million Americans and most of the American population -- 70 percent -- favor this research because they know what it means. But what happens is you get to an election time and things fall away. And what I hoped was by being that guy that people would say, ‘Hey, I know that guy,’ that we'd 14 days out from an election, be talking about stem cells. And we are. And I'm greatly gratified. And if that means taking a beating from that faction of the media, you know, that’s fine. If bringing the message means the messenger gets roughed up a little bit, I'm happy to be that guy.

Posted by evan at 8:34 PM | Permalink

Ed Foster's Gripelog || A Vista of Licensed Censorship

Let's say you get Windows Vista sometime next year and, after using it a bit, decide it really sucks wind compared to other operating systems like Linux or the Mac OS. Can you tell your friends, family, or your blog readers about your comparative findings? Well, before you do, you will at least have to check what Microsoft's web pages say about just what kind of Vista criticism Redmond is allowing at that moment in time.

Which is to say not much.

Posted by evan at 1:18 AM | Permalink

ContraCostaTimes.com | 10/24/2006 | On the schneid for our word usage

It is often said that the Sports Department has its own language. Monday, it had it in 98-point type.

The headline atop the story on the Raiders' 22-9 victory over the Arizona Cardinals read "Raiders get off schnide."

To which many readers responded, "Huh?"

And that was just here in the newsroom.

There were two problems with this headline. One was that it misspelled schneid (any 19th-century German would see that). The other was using a somewhat obscure sports phrase in a headline. A really big headline.

For those of you in need of catching up with your obscure Sports phraseology, word-detective.com provides some insight: "To be 'on the schneid' means to be on a losing streak, racking up a series of losing, and especially scoreless, games. 'Schneid' is actually short for 'schneider,' a term originally used in the card game of gin, meaning to prevent an opponent from scoring any points."

So, we used the phrase correctly. One point for us.

-- Kerry Young, Production Editor

Just kidding. Happy to help. But you left out the important part of that paragraph:

"Schneider" entered the vocabulary of gin from German (probably via Yiddish), where it means "tailor." Apparently the original sense was that if you were "schneidered" in gin you were "cut" (as if by a tailor) from contention in the game. "Schneider" first appeared in the literature of card-playing about 1886, but the shortened form "schneid" used in other sports is probably of fairly recent vintage.

The whole column is here.

Posted by evan at 11:32 PM | Permalink

Media Matters - Limbaugh on Michael J. Fox ad for MO Dem: "Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting"

On the October 23 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh accused actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, of "exaggerating the effects of the disease" in a recent campaign advertisement for Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill. In the ad, Fox endorses McCaskill for supporting embryonic stem cell research, which her opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent, opposes. Noting that Fox is "moving all around and shaking" in the ad, Limbaugh declared: "And it's purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has." Limbaugh added that "this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting, one of the two."

Posted by evan at 1:57 AM | Permalink

In a strip mall in Heath, OH, Nails 3000 and Doggy Style Self-Service Dog Wash.

Nails 3000 used to be called Nails 2000, but they wisely rebooted just before Y2K, and are thus good to go for another thousand years.

Posted by evan at 1:19 PM | Permalink

Helping the hungry on base | The San Diego Union-Tribune

The women and children who formed a line at Camp Pendleton last week could have been waiting for a child-care center to open or Disney on Ice tickets to go on sale.

Instead, they were waiting for day-old bread and frozen dinners packaged in slightly damaged boxes. These families are among a growing number of military households in San Diego County that regularly rely on donated food.

As the Iraq war marches toward its fourth anniversary, food lines operated by churches and other nonprofit groups are an increasingly valuable presence on military bases countywide. Leaders of the charitable groups say they're scrambling to fill a need not seen since World War II.

Too often, the supplies run out before the lines do, said Regina Hunter, who coordinates food distribution at one Camp Pendleton site.

“Here they are defending the country. . . . It is heartbreaking to see,” said Hunter, manager of the on-base Abby Reinke Community Center. “If we could find more sources of food, we would open the program up to more people. We believe anyone who stands in a line for food needs it and deserves it.”

The base's list of recipients swells by 100 to 150 people a month as the food programs streamline their eligibility process, word spreads among residents and ever-proud Marines adjust to the idea of accepting donated goods.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 11:43 AM | Permalink

Running With Scissors - Movies - Review - New York Times

“Running With Scissors” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has many disturbing scenes of sexuality, drug use and age-inappropriate behavior and professional misconduct.

Posted by evan at 1:20 AM | Permalink

After Pat’s Birthday

By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

Pat and Kevin Tillman

Posted by evan at 6:45 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 2:25 PM | Permalink

Imagine Earth without people - 12 October 2006 - New Scientist

"If man disappears tomorrow, do you expect to see herds of poodles roaming the plains?"

Posted by evan at 1:52 PM | Permalink

Microsoft to Step Up Anti-Piracy Stance - washingtonpost.com

SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. is cracking down harder than ever on software piracy as it tries to boost profits, but some say the harsh repercussions facing people who use unlicensed versions of its new Windows Vista operating system could spur a backlash.

The world's largest software maker said Wednesday that people running an unlicensed copy of Vista that it believes is pirated will initially be denied access to some of the most anticipated features of the operating system. That includes Windows Aero, an improved graphics technology.

If a legitimate copy is not bought within 30 days, the system will curtail functionality much further by restricting users to just the Web browser for an hour at a time, said Thomas Lindeman, Microsoft senior product manager.

Under that scenario, a person could use the browser to surf the Web, access documents on the hard drive or log onto Web-based e-mail. But the user would not be able to directly open documents from the computer desktop or run other programs such as Outlook e-mail software, Lindeman said.

Not a pirate? Prove it, and good luck with that.

Or you could use an OS that doesn't consider you a criminal.

Posted by evan at 7:51 PM | Permalink

Susan Sontag: Fascinating Fascism (1974)

... Fascist aesthetics include but go far beyond the rather special celebration of the primitive to be found in The Last of the Nuba. More generally, they flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude. The relations of domination and enslavement take the form of a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people; the turning of people into things; the multiplication or replication of things; and the grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force. The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, "virile" posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death. ...

Posted by evan at 1:38 PM | Permalink