Welcome to the big leagues?

So I am pleased to be able to say that my first contribution to Yahoo! Sports' online magazine ThePostGame.com was chosen (and as of this post is still featured) as the main story on the home page, and has also spent some time as the lead story on Yahoo! itself. All I can say is... Yahoo!

Oh, by the way, the story is titled "The Blurry Line Between Sports and Assault," and was intended as a somewhat lighthearted look at a serious issue: the boundary between competitive drive and injurious intent that, frankly, can make much of sports appealing to so many fans. But apparently my observation—that throwing a solid object (like, say, a baseball) directly at someone with the intention, or at least full understanding, that it could hit him before he can get out of the way would be considered felony assault in the real world—really angered some people. I am flattered by the fact my story has gotten so many comments; less so by the general themes of their content. I have been called a moron and an idiot (or rather, "a idiot"), as well as both "retarded" and "pedantic." But this is one of my favorites:

how bad is the yahoo writing going to get before they get new people?

Awesome. I have written one article—which at that point had been online for maybe an hour or two—and I am already one of the grizzled old hacks who needs to be pushed aside in favor of new blood.

Ah, well. Guess I'll just shake it off and jog to first.

...and 'rithmetic is probably important, too.

Recently, I'd been feeling guilty that I was not one of those dads (or, at the time, a dad-to-be) who felt the need to read to my child (that is, child-to-be) while she was still in the womb. It's not that we didn't think she could hear us—we knew from the way she would start kicking whenever there was loud music, particularly music with a heavy, fast beat,* that she could and would respond to voices and other sounds.

*In fact, that she is outside of the womb, one of the sounds that can be almost guaranteed to calm her is any song by Lady Gaga, played at a slighty higher-than-pleasant volume. We'll see how long this lasts.

So I was relieved to see that now, almost two months post-womb, we still haven't missed the real opportunity to teach our daughter through words: "...new educational research shows that writing is as fundamental to a child’s development as reading." A new book, Your Child's Writing, by Pam Allyn, recommends which steps to take at each age, from starting a "word jar" with your child's favorite words to exposing your child to a variety of writing styles, and then—eventually—letting her "develop her own writing identity."

Nothing, fortunately, about which MFA program to enroll her in.