The deciding argument for yesterday’s competition came from Daniel:
We’d better have someone who has a good chance against Gygax because if Gygax continues to advance there’s a good chance everyone is killed when the ceiling collapses at the end of the talk.
I can’t see Winnie the Pooh slaying any orcs or withstanding any magic spells, so it’s gotta be Shakira, as she’s a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Today’s matchup
Gene Cousineau’s old and short, and white men can’t dunk, but if Fonz can jump the shark he can surely soar over the rim. Peach baskets or leather jackets? It’s all based on your best arguments!
Naismith is, by a wide margin, the more interesting fellow.
But Iwhoever wins is running into a buzzsaw in the next round. My wife went to drama school with Winkler and says he is the nicest person she has ever known, even though she doesn’t use it as a compliment. I think Winkler will accept defeat much more stoically in the next round than Naismith. So to lower the total amount of heartbreak in the world, I choose Winkler.
Jonathan:
What, ya think Ethel will nuke whoever’s up against her?
Did she tell you? She could never keep a secret.
Because I needed a break and had a book to return, I dropped by the University Library and picked up “The basketball man, James Naismith” by Bernice Larson Webb (Univ. of Kansas Press, 1973). I asked when it was last checked out and was surprised to hear, “May, 2016.” Not bad.
Zero of the 3 million volumes in the library collection are biographies of Henry Winkler.
Raghu:
I’m now in the middle of the classic book by A. R. Luria, A Little Book About a Big Memory. It’s wonderful—one of those books I’d heard of for a long time but never gotten around to reading, and now I wonder what took me so long. Also, I decided to read it in French—it’s translated anyway, so why not?—, and it’s written in a very clear and direct style. They didn’t have it at the local public library but it was possible to order it from the library reserve. This book was written in 1965, and this edition is from 1970. The French translation does not appear to be currently in print. Libraries are a good thing.
Please let us know how the Naismith biography goes. I usually enjoy biographies of people with interesting stories. Even if the life is not amazing and the biography is not particularly artful, it can be fun to get a sense of the life, all the things from year to year that we don’t always hear about, that give context to the famous bits. For example, a couple years ago I read an old biography of James Michener. It was a good way to learn about a slice of early/mid-twentieth century America.
I hadn’t heard of the Luria book; sounds interesting!
I’ll bump Naismith up on my to-read pile. It’s hard to see, but the cover has an embossed basketball. Fancy! https://photos.app.goo.gl/ocD4hB21kJXo5Cdb6
I never could center my interest on “Happy Days,” which didn’t seem any more exciting than The Waltons.Wwith wind through the reeds, russeling the leaves around everyone mourning from the parrish, cows moo, tomboys with clay on their overalls. Remembering when you were sick, ma, lone in the house, and you confessed how with old lies you won the best prices for the various hays, and how pa later made you unsell them.
But, hey, my cousins–sitting in a haze in a chamber, lain, drinking some lame beer and eating duncan doughnuts, would just love to ridcule as a Jew Ron Howard. Sorry if that last one is a bit forward.