What’s widely considered the toughest ticket in sports is actually a badge, a 3½-by-2½-inch piece of laminated plastic that grants holders access to all four rounds of the tournament. The face value is $176, but this year a badge will fetch up to $4,000 apiece online or from brokers. The resale also comes with a heightened gamble. (more)

Opening day in baseball and the Masters, for me are the true signs that spring is here. Even if it continues to snow out my window

God, I can’t tell you how much I’d love to walk the course at Augusta!!

A new census report exposes more of the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, showing sharp population declines in waterfront counties of Louisiana and Mississippi. But it may also leave some observers wondering what natural disaster struck Northeast Ohio.

Cuyahoga County saw the sixth-largest drop in population among American counties, losing about 16,000 people between July 2005 and July 2006.

Four of the five counties with steeper losses lay in the path of a hurricane in August 2005. (more)

I’m disappointed that the article didn’t touch on the horrible state of Cleveland’s schools. If you want to attract people, you have to attract businesses. No business person is going to want to relocate anywhere where the school system is sub-par (which for Cleveland is an understatement). I believe the county’s politicians should be focusing on 2 core efforts:

1. Make Cuyahoga county as safe as possible
2. Make the school systems as strong as possible

With good schools and safe streets, everything else will take care of itself.

I guess like many others, my big question is can a President really lob a nuclear weapon at someone without any additional sign-off? I’m guessing there may not be a clear cut answer. I know the POTUS has pretty wide powers as the Commander-in-Chief… Obviously they can order aerial bombings, cruise missile attacks, and the use of troops… The only difference with the nuclear option is that it’s so much more destructive.

Members of the National Music Publishers Association sued XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. over XM radios that blur the distinction between listening to a song and owning it.

The suit revolves around receivers with the XM+MP3 service, which allows listeners to store songs they hear on XM and arrange them into playlists, much as listeners do with iPods. (more)

A statement released by XM said that the suit was a negotiating tactic by the music industry to get leverage in current talks surrounding royalties. I agree with XM. It’s not like they are promoting the distribution of the music by 3rd party individuals.

To me, this would be like the music industry suing radio manufacturers, back-in-the-day, for manufacturing machines that could record radio programming onto blank cassettes. I guess that was a little before my time, maybe they did. Does anyone out there know how far back music industry lawsuits go?

If you’re looking for a quick pick-me-up, checkout these old comics. Yeah it’s sophomoric… that’s what makes it so funny. I can pretty much guarantee only guys will find these humorous.

The artist claims that he wasn’t trying for anything controversial, but how can he be serious? Surely he knew this piece would offend many Christians. Fact of the matter is that he didn’t care if he offended Christians. On the contrary, offending Christians tends to be a pretty good method of garnering publicity without generating any real risk for the artist. Christians will talk, complain, and even boycott…but that will be it. I’m sure there will not be any large (or even small) scale call for the artist’s life. [Of course] Nor should there be. The artist has the right (freedom) to express himself just like anyone else.

Now if the artist really wanted to show some ‘stones’, he’d find a way to depict Muhammad as a canine

Can you imagine the outrage then? Think back to the whole Danish Cartoon global riot. I’m willing to bet good money that any artist who’d dare do that would be forced into hiding by an enraged Muslim population demanding retribution (typically via a barbaric beheading).

I’m tired of the slick publicity ploy of evoking Jesus (or other Christian symbols) in controversial positions (e.g. Kanye West, Madonna, etc.). It’s really become weak and frankly, cowardly. It seems like the unwritten rule in America today is: Offend a Christian, it’s free speech, offend another religion, it’s racist or hate speech.

Geez, does this surprise anyone? How can this be”news”?

Rescuers on Tuesday found one survivor and hunted for four people still missing in a Siberian coal mine, after a gas explosion killed at least 106 in Russia’s worst mining disaster for over a decade. (more)

You might not like your job… but… I can’t think of many jobs worst than working in a Siberian coal mine!