Links
My Favorite Links
A few links about things I like...arranged by category
My Favorite
The home of Peanuts, my favorite comic strip (but it's so much more than just a comic strip), created by the late Charles Schulz, a first-rate cartoonist.
Around the World
Some places to
keep up with the news...
The Onion is a wonderful satire of
the news and contemporary society.
For more serious news, CNN is a good source
for national and international news, as is
The Washington Post. For
local coverage, check out The
Roanoke Times.
Art
Two of the greatest art museums in the United States are the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Art Institute of Chicago (which conveniently holds most of my favorite paintings - read American Gothic by Steven Biel). They're a must-see when you visit those cities. There are several modern artists whose work I particularly enjoy - George Rodrigue (creator of the "Blue Dog"), Tom Everhart (the only artist authorized by Charles Schulz to produce works featuring the Peanuts characters), Rackstraw Downes.
Baseball
Why I Like Baseball:
"I never leave a game before the last pitch, because in baseball, as in life and especially in politics, you never know what will happen." - Richard Nixon
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come." - Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) to Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) in Field of Dreams, based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella
Links About Baseball:
Major League Baseball
Minor League Baseball
Major
League Baseball Player's Association
World Umpire's Association
Bring
Baseball to Northern Virginia!
Or, Bring Baseball to Washington,
D.C.!
Books
Being a professor, I love to read. Ironically, I read at work and then come home, where I read to relax from work. I'm not even going to try to list all of my favorite books and authors, but here are some:
Dan Brown is
the author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons
Bill Bryson
is a writer of travelogues, linguistics, and more.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell...to
say that the book is part Dickens and part Harry Potter oversimplifies
it...so instead, I'll say Susanna Clarke is a brilliant author
You've gotta love F. Scott
Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby
Christopher
Rice has written two intriguing books - The Snow Garden and A
Density of Souls
As far as humorists go, you can't beat
James
Thurber
Harry Potter,
need I say more?
Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil - intrigue in Savannah, GA
Broadway
For general information about the New York theater, check out either broadway.com or Playbill On-Line. You can also check out the Tony Awards.
I've been fortunate enough to see some really great shows - including Carol Channing in Hello Dolly, Jerry Lewis in Damn Yankees, the Laramie Project (good for folks in criminal jutice), Mamma Mia (celebrating the music of ABBA), and my all-time favorite, Sunset Boulevard. You've also gotta love Elaine Stritch and Avenue Q. In 2005, the Tony Award for Best Musical went to Spamalot, which was well deserved, but Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is also an excellent new musical! In my reading of drama, I range from the classic (A Streetcar Named Desire) to the very serious (Angels in America) to the very well-written comedy (Neil Simon especially).
Comics
Before I read the "real" news, I first turn to the comics page. As you read above, my all-time favorite is Peanuts, which still appears in many papers. But I also enjoy Dilbert (it applies to academia as well as it does to business), For Better or For Worse, and Shoe (it's about baseball, politics, and life - what could be better?). General information about comics appears at the National Cartoonists Society (which presents the Reuben Award - Charles Schulz won his first in 1955). There are three "retired" cartoons that are also among my favorites - Pogo (a political opossum), The Far Side (presenting the genius of Bill Larson), and Calvin and Hobbes (whose sophistication is admirable).
Comedians
I tend to prefer the older generation of comedians...including:
Lewis Black...intense!
Johnny Carson...still the King of Late Night.
Bill Cosby...always a classic.
Buddy Hackett...what a storyteller - find one of his shows
and watch!
Bob Hope...a humanitarian and entertainer.
Bob Newhart...dry but sophisticated, and very funny.
Don Rickles...he insults everyone
equally, so it's got to be fun.
The Carol Burnett Show...Carol
Burnett and company were a riot!
As a note, it's always worth watching a Friar's Club Roast. Lots of fun with the old-school celebrities!
Crime and Justice
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Good grief, I teach criminal justice for a living. Check out my more academic-oriented pages if you want links to criminal justice stuff. This links page is for fun stuff.
Delta Chi
I'm proud to be a brother in the Delta Chi Fraternity. Check out the Radford University chapter homepage.
Government
As a good political scientist, of course I'm interested in the workings of government. Politics is what it's all about:
"Politics is far
more complicated than physics" - Albert Einstein
"Politics: Who gets what, when, how" - Harold Laswell
"Politics is like sausage - neither should be viewed in the making" - Otto
Von Bismarck
And here are some good sources of political information:
Thomas
(named after Thomas Jefferson) is a server with all
kinds of information about what is going on in Congress.
House of Representatives Homepage
has all kinds of information about the House.
Senate Homepage
has all kinds of information about the Senate.
General Accounting Office (GAO) is a
great source for reports about any number of issues.
Project Vote-Smart
contains all kinds of information about state and
federal elected officials, including issue positions, interest group
evaluations, and campaign finance information.
The White House
webpage contains information about the Bush
Administration.
The Presidents of the United States,
including information about each administration from
Washington to Clinton
The Federal
Agencies, including links to many cabinet-level
and independent federal agencies
United States Supreme Court,
the official site
On the Docket,
a project of Northwestern University's Medill School
of Journalism, outlines upcoming United States Supreme Court cases
Virginia State
Government Homepage with links to Virginia's
legislature, executive, bureaucracy, and courts
Miscellaneous
Some quick and random thoughts. Go is a very simple but very complex game - it's fun (although I haven't played in a few years). Google Earth has satellite images - I can find a picture of the house where I grew up - it's neat, though big-brotherish. As a child of the 1980s, I enjoy InThe80s.com.
Movies
I like many kinds of movies, but generally speaking, I prefer the older movies. I love the work of Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, the Thin Man series, and more...some of my favorites include It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (the money's buried under a big W, see, a big W), Animal House (seven years of college down the drain), the Blues Brothers (we're on a mission from God), Airplane! (...and don't call me Shirley), Dr. Strangelove (the bomb, Dmitri, the Hydrogen bomb) and any good comedy. The occasional drama is good too - films like Tea with Mussolini, One Hour Photo, the Virgin Suicides - as is a good action-adventure (Indiana Jones, James Bond) or heist caper (Ocean's 11, Score). There are many others that I haven't even mentioned...I could go on and on about movies, so I'll stop now.
Two of my favorite actors are Jack Nicholson and Robin Williams - because they can do it all - from drama to comedy to horror - and do it well.
Two neat movie-related webpages are the Internet Movie Database and the web home of the American Film Institute.
Natural Science
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to
be known." -Carl Sagan
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -Albert
Einstein
What Killed the Dinosaurs?
Probably Extraterrestial Impact... Sixty-five
million years ago, dinosaurs and 70% of other life on earth became extinct.
I think the most persuasive evidence is for the impact theory - the idea
that a meteor or comet crashed into the earth, causing severe and
life-threatening physical changes here on planet earth. This link is to a
presentation by the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History
on the subject.
Images From the Hubble Space Telescope
The word that best describes these images, generated
by the Hubble Space Telescope, is "incredible." You can check out distant
stars, planets, and galaxies, and you can see the stages in the life cycle
of stars. Amazing stuff here.
Earthquake Locator
Earthquakes are tracked on this site, complete with
maps.
Stephen Jay Gould is a Harvard professor who has
had a significant impact upon the theory of evolution and on the
presentation of science in the popular press. His works are uniquely
engaging, interesting, and thought-provoking. Check them out.
Thomas Kuhn
is an important philosopher of science, whose key work is The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions. I'd also recommend reading "The
Fixation of Belief," by Charles S. Peirce.
Television
As with movies, there's just way too much stuff to list here. So, to start, let me admit that I'm a game show junkie. I especially like Match Game and Family Feud (with Richard Dawson). And, it's a dream of mine to be on The Price is Right (to win a showcase full of fabulous prizes) or Jeopardy.
Generally, I prefer classic TV. Bewitched is one of my favorites - especially the episodes with Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur. I also enjoy All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and watching CHiPs as a kid made me want to go into criminal justice. Of the newer shows, I like the Simpsons (my favorite), the West Wing, Frasier, Seinfeld, Inside the Actor's Studio, Modern Marvels, and a whole lot more.
Tennis
I enjoy tennis, old (Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs) and new (Novak Djokovic vs. Roger Federer at the 2007 U.S. Open). Someday, I'd like to go to the U.S. Open or to Wimbledon.