Et cetera
By Staff
GOOD MORNING FRANKLIN COUNTY
Today is Friday, October 22, 2004. Expect partly cloudy skies today with a high of 80 degrees. On this day in history:
1934 – Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, notorious bank robber, is shot and killed by the FBI .
1938 – The first Xerox copy is made.
1962 – President Kennedy puts a naval blockade on Cuba, thus beginning the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1975 – The World Football League disbands.
1978 – Judy Carne, star of "Laugh-In," is arrested for drug possession.
POLL WARS
Those of you who know me know that I grew up in Georgia and am a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs. So it is without a team allegiance that I can say that this week's USA Today/ESPN football poll and the BCS rankings are both absurd. To place the Miami Hurricanes ahead of Auburn makes no sense and is based largely on the fact that Miami was ranked ahead of Auburn in preseason polls. If college football is not going to have a championship game for division I-A, why should polls, which determine national champions, be allowed to rank teams before they even play a game. I say no polls until every team has played at least three games.
By the way, this week's Associated Press poll has Auburn third and Miami fourth.
A BIG PILE OF GARBAGE,
BUT HOW MUCH GARBAGE?
Hurricane Ivan left a big mess in south Alabama. A report released this week states that federal contractors have removed 1million cubic yards of debris from four counties in Alabama including Blount, Escambia, Mobile and Monroe. Exactly how much is 1 million cubic yards of trash? If you put the debris on a football field and stacked it 12 feet high, 1 million cubic yards would fill around 47 football fields. That's a whole lot of trash talking!
10 CENTS A MILE
I go through these spells where I do a bunch of figuring and a few weeks ago I started thinking about the price of gas hovering around $2 a gallon. Since my vehicle averages right at 20 miles per gallon, that means it costs me 10 cents to drive one mile. DUH right? But now I think about that number all the time. If I drive to the mall, I think, hey, that trip just cost me $5.00. Huntsville is a $12 trip and Birmingham is going to cost me $24. I went to Wal-Mart in Russellville the other day and I found myself thinking that the trip cost me 40 cents in gas. I think I'm either going crazy or I've been working a little too much on budget numbers for our church finance committee.
HITS AND MISSES
Back in the spring I made some predictions about the 2004 baseball season. I was right when I predicted the Braves would win the National League East and that the Boston Red Sox would win the American League wild card spot and wind up in the World Series. I missed on my pick that the Chicago Cubs would also be in the World Series. Congratulations to the Red Sox and either the St. Louis Cardinals or the Houston Astros. It should be a great Fall Classic.
POLICE STATE
This story is so bizarre, and so incredible, I think it deserves a place in our ETCETERA Hall of Fame. Jesse Huffman, a nineteen-year-old college student at Montana State University- Bozeman, was at a customs station on the US-Canadian border when he started feeling a little sick and had to go to the restroom. He was in the bathroom for quite a while and wound up clogging up the toilet. Even though Huffman volunteered to fix the clog, some officers took offense to his offense and wound up detaining him for six hours until a court date could be set for his hearing. The officers charged him with criminal mischief but a prosecutor later dropped the charges, maybe because the evidence was, shall we say, flushed down the toilet.
Richard Parker is Minister of Students and Education at First Baptist Church in Russellville. You can e-mail him your comments at RParker@russellvilleFBC.org.
