Are you familiar with the phrase 'It's a hat trick'? It refers to amazing successes. As the Word Detective explains, 'hat trick' :

... comes from the game of cricket, which is an English game resembling a sort of cross between baseball and croquet. Or something. In any case, 'hat trick' dates back to the late 1800's, and is, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains it: 'The feat of a bowler who takes three wickets by three successive balls: originally considered to entitle him to be presented by his club with a new hat or some equivalent.'

Don't worry too much about what in the world a 'wicket' might be -- the point is that three goals are scored by the same player in succession, an accomplishment which originally earned the player a dandy new hat and today would doubtless land a multi-million-dollar contract.

By 1909, 'hat trick' was being applied to similar achievements in other sports, and today it's not uncommon to hear the phrase in a non-sport context -- a lawyer who wins three successive cases, for instance, or a director with three hit movies.

Personally, I would have thought it came from a card game such as bridge, in which one takes tricks

Here is a web site that covers actual hat tricks [ tricks with hats ] and helps you acquire the best sort of hat for doing the tricks, which include various kinds of juggling, tossing, rolling, and other manipulations.

All the Christians who are mad at Jewish people 'because they killed Jesus' ought to ask themselves if they would prefer that Jesus had not been killed.
::blink::
No crucifixion, no Santa Claus.

There's an interesting article at Slate ejournal that discusses where the allegation of Jesus killers came from and why, based on the controversy stirred up by a new Mel Gibson movie on the Crucifixion.

Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, criticized the film because it "unambiguously portrays Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob as the ones responsible for the decision to crucify Jesus."

The problem with the tone of his statement is that, as best we can tell, Jews did kill Jesus. Or, more precisely, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament, Jews prodded the Romans into doing it.

The criticism comes from the history of anti-semitism that justified itself by the notion of Jes as christ-killers. But, according to the Bible, it was the Romans who actually killed him. Anti-semitism doesn't require a 'reason,' it just is, and nothing serves to justify it.

Hey, if the Germans wanted to go after Christ killers, they shouldnt have teamed up with the Italians in WW II.

It's really time for an overhaul of this blog. The appearance is getting kind of old, and I am really quite tired of looking at that 'ad' banner which half the time advertises nothing but 'get rid of this ad.' I meant to do it this weekend, but somehow the press of events took over.

Such as going to the CT AIDS bike tour reception. The riders dismounted at Elizabeth Park in Hartford (or West Hartford) and were greeted by two mayors, a city councilwoman, and a bunch of enthusiasts, including me. They rode 350 miles over 5 days (awesome!) and raised over $28k for various CT AIDS organizations.

Good job everybody!

Is the idea of justice merely a construct developed by oppressors to control the oppressed? Jurgen Habermas says a resounding No. For a goo overview of the life and views of this well rounded philosopher and social theorist see this archived Mitchell Stevens article in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, 10-23-94

Ok, listen up everybody! We have added "Squawkbox.tv" comment system

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I read this early today on Friendster:

...when you're young you've got time. You got nothing but time... throw away a couple of years here, a couple of years there - doesn't matter... y'know the older you get, you say, 'jesus, how much I got? I got 35 summers left.' think about it - 35 summers.

It was a comment by Motorcycle Boy on singer-actor Tom Waits
Once in a while you read something that gives you a better perspective on things, and that's one. When I was about 27 and kind of thinking I had gotten old all of a sudden, I read in a memoire by an elderly women the phrase 'when I was in my 20s' and it sounds SO long ago, I realized I had a lot of life left and was no where close to old.
Although one has to plan ahead, there is something to be said for living life as if we were perpetually a long way from old.
And yet, there is also a great deal to be said for estimating what's left not in years, which are rather vague, but in more specific bits of life -- summers, for example, or Christmas dinners, or walks around the block or the kind of red sunrise I can see out my window as I write this morning. It's good to keep in mind that you won't see the sun rise if you don't get up early in the morning.

Lately there has been a plea afoot for gentler book reviews. But is there any way to be kind to an author other than by showering his book with (deserved) praise? Clive James, writing in the NY Times ('The Good of a Bad Review',9-7-03) , says there is a place for the cutting review and that the pain is deliberate.

When you say a man writes badly, you are trying to hurt him. When you say it in words better than his, you have succeeded.

He adds that to tromp on poor writing is to perform a service to literature, and further, that this is not a bad place to give vent to human malice.