Friday, February 21, 2014

Heartwarming Story About A Boy and His Dog



This is pretty touching. Eight-year-old Owen Hopkins has Schwartz-Jamel syndrome, an extremely rare disorder that causes his muscles to constantly be tense and flexed. Ignoring the silver lining of such impressive biceps for an eight year old, his condition is debilitating, painful, and has resulted in an understandable lack of comfortableness in public. Enter Haatchi, a three-legged dog Owen's parents fell in love with and adopted.

It never, ever gets old seeing the remarkable bonds that can develop between humans and animals, especially dogs. Cats always seem like they're plotting our assassination, but dogs will be your friend until the end of time for seemingly no reason at all.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

An Afternoon (Ok, More Like an Hour) with Gen. David Petraeus

On Friday January 31st, I had the pleasure of attending the World Affairs Council of West Michigan’s 64th Anniversary lunch, where the guest of honor was General David Petraeus. (Here is MLive's recap of the event.) Petraeus, not undeservedly, is filling his financial coffers after concluding a distinguished career in public service last year (no, the reason for the abrupt end to said distinguished career didn't come up) by jet-setting around the globe, consulting and giving talks much like this one. I doubt he was thrilled to trek up to Grand Rapids after a few days spent in sunny Abu Dhabi, but hey, tough stuff. Army Strong, right?

His remarks, formatted as a conversation with Dr. Lori Murray, the Distinguished Chair for National Security at the US Naval Academy and former chair of the World Affairs Councils of America, were free-flowing but centered around six crucial issues facing the national security of the United States today: cybersecurity, energy, education, the US’ economic competitiveness, the Middle East, and, last but not least, dysfunction in Washington.

The most encouraging thing he said during his remarks was that he thinks the world is on the cusp of a sustained period of American excellence, what he termed a 'North American decade'. Thanks to innovations in energy technology, in which the US far outpaces the rest of the world, we are now a net exporter of energy for the first time in decades. Fracking technology, of which he displayed a deep, technical knowledge and deemed 'able to be done safely' (though there are skeptics), has made natural gas once thought unreachable able to be easily extracted. This and increased drilling elsewhere places the US on the precipice of what he calls 'the single biggest development in geopolitics in decades'.

This wouldn't totally insulate the US from market interruptions thanks to Middle East unrest or Venezuelan craziness, but would certainly allow more flexibility and a more hands-off approach to the Middle East. With the basic functioning of our economy not beholden to the whims of, ahem, let's call them 'unstable' regimes, suddenly freed up are a lot of time and resources to be redirected domestically. What a concept. (In the middle of his piece in the latest TIME magazine on the wily Hamid Karzai, Fareed Zakaria points out that, in 2009, the US military was pumping $4 billion per month into Afghanistan. For comparison, the entire GDP of Afghanistan, after taking out foreign aid and the production of opium and subsequent export of heroin, is a paltry $1 billion. Per year. Kudos.)

The lone pause in the conversation came when one intrepid audience member, who we would soon find out was born and bred in West Michigan before attending Calvin College (she informed us, yelling loudly), began heckling Petraeus, calling him ‘a war criminal’ and ‘guilty of slaughtering innocent Iraqis’. He paused long enough for her to be escorted out, and continued as if nothing had happened. Apparently, after a lifetime of dodging IEDs and suicide bombers, a crazed 20-something in the Bible Belt is not so bad.

He was an impressive speaker, with a fluid grasp of an extremely wide array of topics. It will be interesting to see what he does now in civilian life, because from the level of expertise he had retained on what seemed like every relevant topic out there, he won't be on the sidelines for too long.


Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Best Olympic Moments So Far...

I love the Olympics. The pageantry, the tradition, the thrill of gold and the agony of the near-miss and the long four year wait for redemption. Plus, there's no end to the amount of crazy that happens. Here are my highlights so far:

This insane trick. I went to Deer Valley in Utah for a long weekend my senior year of high school, and saw the freestyle moguls course from the 2002 Salt Lake Games. It was STEEP, and the moguls were ginormous. I couldn't imagine taking the run, let alone hitting a huge jump and doing an aerial maneuver in the middle of it. And this guy does a front flip! Craziness.




Bob Costas' eyeballs. It's impossible not to be transfixed by the pink-eye infection seen around the globe. Thank God he abdicated his Olympic commentating throne, giving way to the infection-free Matt Lauer. It's awfully difficult to watch a German take a luge run at 80 miles/hour after staring at THOSE EYES for 15 minutes. Makes a person queasy. (But at least he could try the local spirits without anyone noticing.)




For all the pre-Games critiques of the shoddy hotels, corrupt organizers, and subpar facilities, there have been some gorgeous views of the Caucasus mountains. 






Check out more crazy, gravity-defying photos here.

(Although the stories emerging from journalists and athletes in Sochi are pretty epic.)



But even with all the eye-grossness and having to see Putin on TV all the time, it's pretty cool seeing someone this happy.




What are your favorite events?


Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Favorite 5 Super Bowl Ads

What was your favorite one?

The goofy one:




The patriotic one: (despite the surprisingly racist reaction)




The funny one:




The one that made you go 'awwwww...':




And the inspirational one:



Sunday, February 2, 2014

A Super Surprise

After seeing the inspiring Duracell ad featuring the first deaf NFL player, Derrick Coleman, who will be playing in tonight's Super Bowl, the father of 9-year old deaf twin girls tweeted this photo of a letter the girls wrote Coleman:


Coleman then surprised the girls with something of his own:


See more US News from ABC|ABC World News

Who're you rooting for tonight? I say Seattle in a close one, 24-21.