Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Mud Cats Champs, 19-18

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My youngest’s (Justin’s) baseball team, the Mud Cats, won the Southwest Forsyth Little League coach pitch championship 19-18 in extra innings on Saturday.  Best of all for Justin is he ended the year with one of his best games, going 3-4 with a huge hit to left center in the last inning that put the winning run on second.  Two hits later his team won the whole enchilada.

In coach pitch normally if a kid makes contact he’s going to get on base.  The Mud Cats and the Sand Gnats were the defensive exception in the league.  Both teams made great plays in the field, so the kids really had to hit to get on base.  That’s why the last inning was so impressive;  it was the bottom half of the Mud Cats order and four straight kids hit the ball hard to drive in the winning run.

Many thanks to the coaches, who did a wonderful job teaching the boys the fundamentals and making sure the game was fun, win or lose.

Smart People

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Has anyone else noticed that when writing your blog it is so much easier to link to stupid people, or at least people doing stupid things, and make fun of them than it is to identify smart people and write about why you think they are? I even created a category called "Stupid People." Maybe it’s just me giving into that age-old temptation to criticize others in order to feel better about myself. 

Well, it hit me like a brick today that I’ve been the beneficiary of many smart people’s wisdom over the years, but since I began setting up my RSS feeds a while back I think that I’ve probably accelerated that process 10-fold.  There are some truly brilliant people out there, and I’m constantly humbled by what they know and how much I have yet to learn.

So with this post I launch the "Smart People" category.  It is not a comprehensive list, and it is limited to those I can link to online, so it precludes many of the true geniuses I’ve known for a long time.  I also want to point out that I often disagree with many of the people I’ll be listing, but that’s okay because their convictions are informed by a true thought process that is exhibited consistently in their writing.

Today I begin with a list in no particular order.  Later I hope I’ll be able to tell you why I think they’re brilliant, but for now just take my word for it:

Dana Blankenhorn
Umair Haque
Rex Hammock
Patrick Eakes
Chewie (wish I knew her real name)
Ed Cone
John Robinson
Lex Alexander
David Hoggard

That’s a start.

Health Insurance Required for Admission

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UNC-Charlotte just announced that all undergrad students will be required to provide proof of having health insurance before being admitted.  If they don’t have it then they will be required to pay $595 for the year to use the university’s preferred provider health plan.

Some of the highlights of the article which just amazed me:

  • $595 for the year?  That’s less than $50 per month.  I think maybe I should go back to school.
  • 4,000 of the 20,000 UNCC students are expected to take the university’s plan.  Tha means that a full 20% of the students may come from a family without coverage.  That’s frightening.  On the other hand that number might reflect the fact that some parents view it as a way to reduce their insurance load, especially if their kid is getting financial aid and the policy can be rolled into the aid package (which they ARE allowed to do).  Still that’s a lot of people without a safety net.
  • If the students use Student Health Services there’s no cost, but if they have to see a real doctor they have a 20% co-pay (they don’t have to pay a deductible).  I don’t know about you, but when I was a student I didn’t have a lot of money for anything beyond the essentials…food and beer.  I’d have to be on my deathbed before I’d see a doctor if I knew I was going to have to pony up $40 or $50.

I’d say that health care is pretty much the biggest non-war issue in the US right now.  It’s affecting everything, and not in a good way.

So You Wanna Be an Entrepreneur

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Do you think you want to be an entrepreneur?  Then you should take this personality evaluation before you get going.  It’s free and I think it’s probably pretty accurate.

I used to be very skeptical of things like this (Myers Briggs comes to mind), but after being subjected to a bunch of them and finding the results to be accurate, and exceptionally predictive, I guess you could say I’ve learned to accept them.

Source of link: Harry Joiner’s Blog