Why Sotomayor should be confirmed

Along with the fact that she is very qualified (graduated from Princton summa cum laude, editor of the Yale Law Review, decades in experience, etc.), I think this passage from the New York Times profile on Sotomayor proves why she deserves to be confirmed by the Senate and become our next Associate Justice in the Supreme Court:

At other times, it involved more derring-do: if the firm had a tip from the United States Customs Office about a suspicious shipment, Ms. Sotomayor would often be involved in the risky maneuver of going to the warehouse to have the merchandise seized. One incident that figures largely in firm lore was a seizure in Chinatown, where the counterfeiters ran away, and Ms. Sotomayor got on a motorcycle and gave chase.

She chased counterfeiters on a motorcycle. Can she be on the Supreme Court and star in an action movie at the same time?

You decide

Is the title of this blog (Stuff Matt Read) past tense like the sentence "This is stuff that Matt Read" or in caveman speak?

Some people just hate hugs

I'm not a fan of hugs. Sure, I'll hug my grandmas, my aunts and other family that I am legally required to hug (at least that's what my parents told me when I was a kid).

And apparently some schools are with me on this trend. From the New York Times:

schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.

Parents, who grew up in a generation more likely to use the handshake, the low-five or the high-five, are often baffled by the close physical contact. “It’s a wordless custom, from what I’ve observed,” wrote Beth J. Harpaz, the mother of two boys, 11 and 16, and a parenting columnist for The Associated Press, in a new book, “13 Is the New 18.”

I'll be the first to say it: Teenagers are weird.

Rick Reilly is a horrible writer

I have never liked Rick Reilly's writing style. Something about it just annoys me, and I know that many others feel the same way.

It felt weird when I actually thought a couple of his recent columns were actually good -- something was unnatural. There was a disturbance in the force.

But with his latest column about the Denver Nuggets, all balance was replaced in the force.

Just take a look at what passes for cleverness with Reilly:

Moses wandered the desert for 40 years? Pah. That's Club Med compared to us. For 41 years, we've eaten sand and washed it down with tall glasses of bile. At least Moses had manna. All we ever got was crayon jerseys.

So why does he make so much money?

Heinken walk in closet commercial

I first saw this commercial during a Champion's League soccer game earlier this year. But every time I see it, I still think it is funny.



Of course, the version I saw was in English.

Hispanic vs Latino

Via NewMexiKen

Slate looks at the difference between the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino."

Now that Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina Supreme Court nominee, the question is getting more play in the media than it normally does.

The war against fair use by the Associated Press

The Associated Press has been waging a war against what they consider copyright infringement. Included is the little blurbs that you see on Google News when you search for a news event.

The Mediashift blog from PBS gave us a brief history of the AP's "Battles with news aggregators."

How Sotomayor saved baseball

I'm a pretty big sports fan, and I follow baseball relatively closely (I can tell you, for example, that Zach Greinke of the Kansas City Royals currently boasts a 0.84 ERA over nine starts). So when President Barack Obama mentioned baseball yesterday in his speech introducing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, it caught my attention.

From the transcript of the announcement:

Born in the South Bronx, she was raised in a housing project not far from Yankee Stadium, making her a lifelong Yankee's fan. I hope this will not disqualify her -- (laughter) -- in the eyes of the New Englanders in the Senate. Some say that Judge Sotomayor saved baseball. (Laughter.)

Obama, who hails from Illinois, is a baseball fan and cheers for the White Sox.

And baseball fans should be grateful to her as well. Included in the White House biography of Sotomayor:

In 1995, for example, she issued an injunction against Major League Baseball owners, effectively ending a baseball strike that had become the longest work stoppage in professional sports history and had caused the cancellation of the World Series the previous fall. She was widely lauded for saving baseball. Claude Lewis of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined "the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams."

The New York Times' Sports Business blog says that "bestowing upon her Ruthian status (Babe, not Bader Ginsburg) is a bit hyperbolic." The blog went on to say, however, that "there is no doubt of the importance of her decision."

Donald Fehr, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association said that Sotomayor did not single-handedly stop the work stoppage, but gave owners and players time to get an agreement in place.

"If it hadn’t ended when she ended it, it would have gone on for some time and it would have gotten uglier and uglier," Fehr said.

So there is all of this talk about the effects of what she did. But what did she actually do?

From the Associated Press:

When the National Labor Relations Board went to court that March 27 seeking an injunction forcing owners to restore free agent bidding, salary arbitration and the anti-collusion provisions of an expired collective bargaining agreement, Sotomayor's name came out of the wheel.

For a good overview of salary arbitration see this post from Hardball Times. And colluding on salaries by the owners is pretty obvious -- they wanted to keep the salaries as low as possible.

"This strike has placed the entire concept of collective bargaining on trial," she said in her ruling.

She also was on the U.S. Court of Appeals during a notable case involving the National Football League. Maurice Clarett wanted to come out of college early to play in the NFL.

The NFL Players Union wanted to keep Clarett out of the NFL draft (under the NFL agreement, players must have been out of high school for three years before they can enter the NFL).

Peter King from Sports Illustrated wrote:

That's what unions do every day -- protect people in the union from those not in the union. Why is this case different?''

It wasn't. Clarett lost the case. He was drafted in the third round the next year by the Broncos in what turned out to be a ridiculously bad pick, a total waste by then Denver coach Mike Shanahan.

As a Kansas City Chiefs fan, the fact that the pick was a bust made me happy.

World Series of Poker through the eyes of Doyle Brunson

I am always intrigued by seeing poker on TV. About half of my friends are the types who will talk about the latest developments in the World Series of Poker while the other half can't change the channel fast enough if they change to ESPN2 while the WSOP is on (which seemingly is every day).

ESPN.com has an article on Doyle Brunson "the only legend."

Brunson won two WSOP main event titles, back in the 1970s, and has ten overall bracelets. And he thinks he could have even more.

Focused on cash games, not recognizing the value that would one day be placed on bracelets, Brunson failed to win one from 1979 to 1991, opting only to play in the main event and 2-7 lowball championship each year. "I never did play in many tournaments," Brunson admits. "A guy like Phil Hellmuth has played three times as many tournaments as I have. I have no idea how many bracelets I'd have today, but obviously it would be more. I didn't pick a couple of mine up because I had so many. I'd given a bunch to family members and didn't think it was worth it to go get them."

An interesting read.