6 reasons the NBA Playoffs are better than March Madness

Cavs vs warriors

I know that it’s cool to say that you like NCAA Basketball over the NBA. You are entitled to your opinion, but if this is your opinion, you are wrong. Sorry.

You might be able to convince me that the NCAA regular season is better than the NBA regular season, but when it come to the NBA Playoffs vs. March Madness there is no contest. None.

The NBA Playoffs are better than March Madness.

Here’s why:

The NBA is more authentic. The purity of NCAA basketball has been tainted with embarrassing recruiting violations and stripped championships. We can no longer pretend that passion and love of the game drives NCAA basketball. Money drives it.

Money drives the NBA, too. Why…

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All Because a Girl Loved to Read

IMG_0392 The Rubini family

Ten-year-old Claire Rubini loved to read. After she suddenly died from a previously unknown heart condition at summer camp in 2000, her parents, Brad and Julie, wanted to spread her love of reading. And boy have they.

Last week I had the chance to see how Claire’s love of reading has led to thousands of kids in the Toledo-area receiving free books and reading awards.

Brad and Julie started a children’s book festival they called Claire’s Day with the purpose “to honor [Claire] in a special tribute to her love of reading, storytelling, music, encouraging others to read and simply having fun with friends.”

The Claire’s Day staff, a team of volunteers…

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Syrian children flee ISIS for sweatshops in Turkey

Syrian boy in Turkeysweatsho
A small boy makes shoes in the factory. Photograph: Ahmed Deeb

Syrian refugees have been flooding into Turkey, but what do they do when they make it there? Some work in apparel factories.

“He can make 400 shoes a day. He’s a real man.”

That quote is from the manager at a shoe factory about his 13-year-old Syrian worker. According to the story in the Guardian, more than ⅓ of the workers at the factory were Syrian children.

From the article:

According to Unicef, more than half of Turkey’s 2.7 million registered Syrian refugees are children – and nearly 80% of them are not in school….

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Farmer/cartoonist fired for holding mirror to Big Ag

 

farmer cartoon

Rick Friday is a farmer and a cartoonist. Farming is his muse or at least it was his muse until he he poked Big Ag in the eye with a recent cartoon.

The cartoon as described in the NY Times story on his firing:

The cartoon shows two farmers, in overalls and skewed baseball caps, chatting at a fence.

“I wish there was more profit in farming,” one farmer says.

“There is,” the other replies. “In year 2015 the C.E.O.s of Monsanto, DuPont, Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers.”

After 21 years drawing more than 1,000…

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Where the hell do dreams come from?

IMG_3686

I haven’t eaten Domino’s for years, so I’m not sure why I was dreaming about Domino’s, but I was. And I wasn’t just normal me, but SuperMe, as in I was a superhero with the ability to fly.

So Super Kelsey was looking for a way to earn a few more bucks. Domino’s apparently in this dream world was delivering pizzas via an uber-like delivery service accessible from the Domino’s app. If you had time to deliver pizzas, you logged into the app and saw what opportunities were available. Different deliveries earned you a different amount. I suppose this had to do with distance and the size of the order, maybe, but I really have no idea. None of this exactly makes sense.

I…

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