Pre-Departure Links Deluge

These should keep you off the streets:

Richard Kahlenberg believes that most distance learning is, at the least, problematic. He's fundamentally right, of course. Although this review focuses mostly on secondary education, the reality is that institutions look at online education, see a cash cow and justify it not for pedagogical reasons (anyone care to tell me how to give a test to an online class?) but rather out of self interest couched in the language of giving the consumers what they want (rather than what they need).

The C's and Lakers are tied at one game apiece as the NBA Finals head to Boston in the ridiculous 2-3-2 format that the league uses for the finals, and only the finals. Going into the series the great Charles Pierce wondered why the C's were underdogs. This will mark the first time one of my teams will have a chance to win a championship while I am away, pretty remarkable given the extent of my travels. Suffice it to say, I am ambivalent. Not that I expect much pity given what I'm going to be doing.

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, the smartest man I've ever been in a room with, recently put the smack down on conservative "originalism" saying it "has only a tenuous connection to reality." He's right, of course.

Former federal prosecutor-turned-conservative commentator Andy McCarthy's book is apparently riddled with errors, all of which just happen to bolster his anti-Obama screed.

In the wake of the Rand Paul idiocy about the 1964 Civil Rights Act comes a reminder that in places like Paul's Kentucky not only racism, but active discrimination, are alive and well.

There are a million things you can read about soccer (or football if you prefer -- I tend to use them interchangeably) right now, given our proximity to the World Cup, but I would recommend taking a few minutes to read this, from The Chronicle Review. (Of course I hope you'll also regularly check in at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog where I hope to have daily coverage of things on the ground, not only from a football perspective, but more significantly in looking at how South Africa -- and Botswana -- experience the Cup.)

Texas is looking at a budget crunch right now. My adopted state is looking at cutting back on vital services. And the Lone Star State loved to look at the rest of the world and point fingers when things remained ok here while the economy tanked elsewhere. (Oh, you should have heard the smugness about California's meltdown two years ago. Admittedly, California is rightfully as source of mockery for all given its absurd political-economic system. Still -- many of us knew Texas was just putting off its own reckoning.) Well, Texas is giving $25 million dollars to Formula One, apparently just because.

I have not had the time nor the inclination to weigh in on the fiasco that was Israel's inept handling of the ship of fools heading toward Gaza last week. But Leon Wieseltier hits it pretty squarely on the head when he writes that whatever the justification, Israel may as well just have called its invasion of the ship "Operation Make the World Hate Us." Bibi Netanyahu is a bigot and a fool and has set back the cause of Israel by decades.

Apparently this is what follows "Generation X." I have no idea what it all means.

Have I mentioned that I'm going to the World Cup?

Simmons Takes a Few (Deserved) Shots

At Slate's blog Scocca two guys with whom I must admit I was unfamiliar until today, Tom Scocca and Josh Levin, obliterate The Sportsguy's Finals Preview column at ESPN.com.

Celtic Pride: Or, The Wearing of the Grin

I have been remarkably silent about the Celtics over the last few weeks.

Don't mistake this for anything other than what it is: I'm superstitious as all hell.

Curses are dumb. They are not real. But I'll be damned if I am going to be the one who messes with fate.

And so for two months I've been wearing the same C's hat. I've been drinking the same Sam Adams beer during games. And given how the Patriots performed in the Super Bowl I've been uncharacteristically humble about the guys in green. Given that I'm a Red Sox fan who well remembers life before October 2004, I've been fatalistic. Given that it has been more than half of my life since the C's were the most dominant team in the history of American professional sports, I've been intolerably uptight. In sum, I've been miserable (albeit with good beer and a comfortable hat at my disposal). If I have learned anything, I have learned that there is no commutative property of sports. That the Red Sox and Patriots have been successful has had almost no bearing on my emotional reaction to the Celtics of late.

Odds are that if you are reading now, you know exactly what happened in the game last night. The Celtics crushed the Lakers. Humiliated them. The C's suffocated the Lakers when the visitors were on offense (enough of the Kobe as Jordan comparisons, eh?) and buried them when the C's were on O. The Big Three proved to be stars, the supporting cast overwhelmed, and the bench made all the difference, outplaying the much more heralded Lakers Bench Mob for the entire series. It was quite clear from early on that the better team came to play, and while the team from Hollywood had come in hopes of something magic (or Magic) happening, instead Red reached on down and ... .

If you are a Celtics fan a breathless recap will be thrilling to you. But there are better places to get that. (See Bob Ryan's article here, Dan Shaughnessy's here, Sportsguy's here and if you are into schadenfreude -- and you know you are -- I'd strongly recommend the columns by the LA Times' Bill Plaschke, TJ Simers, and Mark Heisler.) And if you are not a Celtics fan this is just annoying -- more Boston sports crap in an era where Boston sports crap seems to be ubiquitous. (Nota bene: Don't blame us. Root for better teams.)

I am happy as a lifelong Celtics fan. I am happy as a longtime Paul Pierce booster.

I am happy as a guy who was lucky enough to be born into a legacy that included Bill Russell and Red and Cousy and Havlicek and Tommy and Jo Jo and the Jones boys and Luscy and Cowens. I am happy as a guy who grew up with Larry and the Chief and McHale, but also DJ and Cornbread and Henderson and Walton. I am happy as a guy who lived through the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. I am happy as a guy who saw a generation of basketball fans grow up worshipping Jordan and anointing Kobe because they did not know what came before them. I am happy as a fan. Title number 17, against the Lakers, at the New Garden, with my favorite Celtic in a generation leading the way. It does not get much better than this.

[All photos from The Boston Globe/Getty Images.]

Boston Days

Sportsguy has a fantastic column from earlier in the week in which he juxtaposes the flourishing Boston sports scene, and especially the re-emergence of the Celtics, with what he sees as a renaissance of the city of Boston, as embodied in the Big Dig. I think there is a great deal to this argument, as does the Slice.

Beat LA!

If you're younger than thirty, you likely have no idea just how big a rivalry the Celtics and the Lakers once had. That rivalry has gone dormant for two decades because both teams have fallen upon hard times, and when the lskers were truly great the Celtics were, well, not. The Celtics and Lakers are the top two brands in the history of the NBA. They have combined to win thirty titles in a league just over six decades old. The magic-Bird years represented the apogee of the rivalry, but prior to the 1980s the Celtics and Lakers had dueled it out in the 1960s, albeit in a lopsided series of competitions that the Celtics dominated.

On Thursday the rivalry commences anew, and if there is any justice in this world I will be at the game. I head to Boston Tuesday morning for a couple of days of shenenigans with friends before I head to a college reunion that I am looking forward to despite the fact that it makes me feel old. The Thunderstick and I have agreed to make a solid push for tickets Thursday despite the fact that we won't be able to sit together.

Kobe and the Lakers have taken on the role of heavy favorites, largely because of the comparable ease with which LA rolled through the Western Conference playoffs. But I am not buying that Kobe is that much more dominant than LeBron James, and the rest of the Lakers' team, while better than Cleveland's does not strike me as measurably better than what Detroit put on the floor. Mine may be a homer's call, but I believe that the combo of Pierce (still my favorite current Celtic), Garnett, and a rejuvenated Ray Allen, plus the tendency of the role players to step up as Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo and so many others have done this postseason, will lead the Celtics to banner number seventeen in six games.

Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!

A Thousand Words

[From ESPN.com]

I think today's game probably goes down as an instant classic. I had to miss the third quarter and well into the 4th because I was flying from Tallahassee to Stlanta, but I caught the first half and the last few minutes as Paul Pierce made his place in Celtic lore.

Bring on Detroit, a team, unlike Cleveland, toward which I can really work up a nice antipathy.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

This story about Saddam hussein's bizarre fears regarding catching STD's while in US custody had a much better headline when it arrived in my inbox from South Africa's Independent Online, which consolidates stories from a dozen or so South African newspapers: "Was Saddam Stupid."

Speaking of stupidity, leave it to a Yankees fan to give the Sox-Yanks rivalry an ugly twist.

(And since the C's-Cavs series starts tonight, I may as well get the proceedings off on the right foot: Tom, Don, the Cavs and their fans are poopieheads. C's in six, despite the reality that LeBron is likely to score 200 points in the series.)