As If You Needed Another Reason To Dislike Memphis…

Former Razorback standout Corey Beck was shot there last week.

Beck and a friend made the mistake of being in Memphis, in a car, and paid for it when two men in masks and a shotgun approached and tried to rob them.

Beck was shot in the face and hands, but managed to drive to a nearby fire station from where he was taken to the hospital.

Originally listed in critical condition, he had been upgraded to fair condition by Wednesday.

Beck was the starting point guard for Arkansas team who won the National Championship in 1994 and finished second in 1995.

He was probably only the third or fourth best player on the team, but that says more about how deep that team was than anything else.

Here’s hoping that Corey has a speedy and full recovery.

A Near Miss

As I mentioned before, I was in Memphis over the weekend to play in an ultimate tournament and visit family.

The family visiting went well, and the tournament was pretty good too. We ended up finishing fourth out of ten teams, narrowly missing qualifying for Regionals. We should have done it too—we were up 7-3 in the third place game before eventually losing 15-12.

The loss was a little disappointing, but either way, it was our best finish at this tournament, and it was fun to get to see and play with a lot of my old teammates.

My running paid off fairly well too. I certainly don’t have all my speed or endurance back yet, but I played well overall and was definitely in better shape than I was earlier in the summer.

Speaking of near misses, that’s me in the photo above, not quite getting the D against my man. Oh well, I was always more of a threat on offense…

A Painful Argument

I’m not usually a More Than One Post Per Day kind of guy, but when I heard about San Diego Padres left fielder Milton Bradley on ESPN, I just couldn’t resist.

Bradley is not a Hall of Fame caliber player, but after this episode yesterday, he has earned a place for himself in the Bizarre Injury Hall of Fame.

Basically, Bradley suffered a season-ending ACL tear when he fell to the ground during an argument with an umpire in yesterday’s game against the Colorado Rockies.

Losing Bradley is a major blow to the Padres, who are contending for a playoff spot. Bradley was playing the best baseball of his career, and through 42 games with San Diego this season, was hitting .313 with 11 home runs and a 1.004 OPS.

For San Diego, the news gets even worse: Mike Cameron had already left the game on Sunday after being injured in an outfield collision with—interestingly enough—Bradley, so the Padres now find themselves without 2/3 of their starting outfield.

Apparently, the altercation began after a fan heckled first base umpire Mike Winters and Milton Bradley agreed with him. Kind of gives new meaning to the term “adding insult to injury.”

An Astoundingly Bad Idea

There are a lot of poorly-conceived projects and ideas floating around the World Wide Web, but I was still pretty surprised when I stumbled upon the Sexual Relationship Database, developed by World Health Optimization Management, or W.H.O.M.

What exactly is the Sexual Relationship Database? Well, the title is somewhat self-explanatory, but here’s what W.H.O.M. has to say about its project:

In an effort to better understand society's interconnected nature, this database was created to serve as a repository for information regarding the sexual histories of individuals, across the world and throughout time.

Simply enter a name, and all known sexual partners of this person will appear to the right. However, most individuals have yet to be entered into our database. If you have valid information regarding the sexual past of anyone, at any period of time, please enter it now. Your assistance is vital to the success of this project.

I suppose it is theoretically possible that such a database could be useful. If it was both accurate and comprehensive, it might force a degree of accountability on would-be sexually promiscuous individuals, and I guess it would also alert you if someone you were interested in was such a person.

Of course, the following disclaimer on the website pretty much eliminates any chance of accuracy:

To insure accuracy, anyone may edit sexual histories, provided he or she logs in with a valid email address.

So basically, it’s considerably easier to corrupt this information than even Wikipedia.

As evidence of this, just check out President Clinton’s sexual history. While I fully believe that such a list would be extensive, I also doubt that it would include Osama Bin Laden.

So if you have some free time, head on over to the SRD and enter any pertinent information that you may be privy to. Remember: your assistance is vital to the success of this project.