Yesterday's post (read below) about the death of Yankee pitcher, Cory Lidle, prompted me to bring up the concept of the MonkeySphere. I have heard this concept called in multiple names. But, the idea is the same throughout. Our brains are limited in the amount of people that we can comprehend. The idea of 6 billion people to us, is completely artifical to us. Only about 150 or so people are actually REAL to us. Studies have shown that native cultures, would separate into tribes no bigger than 150 people. Businesses accomplish the most when there are under 150 people at each location. It's an odd concept, one that has a lot of interesting elements to it, that you can read more about at the above link. But, it may explain yesterday's episode. Cory Lidle was never a real person to us. We watch the news and hear about fires burning down buildings and killing people, and we say that's sad and change the channel. But, it's not really sad, because those people aren't real to us. I quote the movie, 'Following', "It's like going to a futbol match, and you're in this giant arena full of people and your eyes graze across the stadium and you stop on one person. They're no longer part of the crowd. They're an individual." Cory Lidle was not an individual to us. That can explain why his death did not affect people. However, it does not explain why his death was so quickly mocked. Perhaps because his death seems to be his fault?

Cory Lidle, pitcher for the now eliminated NY Yankees drove his small plane into a New York skyscraper yesterday, and died. A few hours later, on my drive home, I was listening to a Chicago sports radio show, preparing to hear tribute memories. What I heard were comments like, "How do you fly into a building accidentally? Well, if you saw his pitching the other night, you could see he has aiming problems, hahahahaha." I kid you not. I was absolutely flaberghasted that people like that could exist. Then, this morning at LifeTime, guys were making similar comments, "Steinbrenner's probably going to blame Lidle's optometrist, haha." "Who runs a plane into a building? What an idiot." What is going on?

"You can not presume a position of authority. You must be placed there."

People say that tragedy brings people together. I don't thing that's what it is. I think tragedy brings people to the same mindset, be it loss, grief, anger, revenge. And it is that shared mindset that unites people. So, after Sept. 11th, non-conservatives didn't just start liking Bush's politics; we just all agreed that there was something more important to come together for. There still is.

Of course, everyone who knows me knows that my number one political push is for the ending of the domestication of animals. Here is another situation that helps illustrate my point. Every now and then, you hear of these GreenPeace or other animal rights groups sneaking into zoos and letting all of the animals out of their cages...freeing them. Those same activist groups likely go home at night to their several dogs, cats, birds, etc. It's ok for them to cage animals in their own house, because they love them?

So, there are quite a lot of comments that could be made about the Congressman Foley situation. And not too many of them would be very insightful. But, I have one. Are those who are trying to use this congressman to link Republicans with crime and debauchery, inadvertently, linking homosexuals with sexual perversion?

When is one's sex drive turned on? Is it a gradual thing? Is it sudden? Does it get turned on like a light switch during one's first sexual experience? I was thinking about my celibate single friends who want to stay celibate until marriage. Once someone has a sexual experience, becoming celibate for a long period of time seems very challenging. But, if one had never had a sexual experience, physiologically speaking, would there be the same longing?

There is a book called "Moneyball" that talks about the sport of baseball from a purely financial stance. It refers to an Oakland Athletics team from a few years ago, and the management that had one of the least paid teams in baseball win 100 games. The big idea behind it was that they created a financial metric that ranked each player based on things that were truly important, RBI's, On-base-percentage, etc. It turned out that some of the top ranking players were on the bench for other teams. They scouted and bought up those players and put together one of the most underpaid, overperforming teams of all time. It's a quite remarkable study about how to treat a game like a business in order to better win the game. It also makes me feel dirty.

"How can one be wise if he has not yet been born?"

Since moving up here, I've been buying the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune. It's fabulous. In Peoria, there was no good paper to get, and I didn't care, because Yahoo! News gave me everything I needed. But, there's something about flipping through an actual newspaper, not reading off a computer screen, and getting a wider assortment of stories at your fingertips. I don't know. But, how about an electronic newspaper? You buy a flexible electronic reader that folds up into one newspaper spread. It unfolds like a regular paper, but only one spread thick. With either wi-fi or through a USB input, this same paper updates electronically every day, or throughout the day. When you open the paper, there is a menu that allows you to flip through the paper electronically. Much of the cost of newspapers is caught up in printing and distribution. Perhaps this would slow the death of newsprint?