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Using the example of baseball’s knockdown pitches, Charles Krauthammer writes on the American way of revenge.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. And although retribution shall surely come in the fullness of time, a ballplayer can only wait so long.
Accordingly, when Boston slugger David Ortiz came to bat against Tampa Bay’s David Price at the end of May — for the first time this season — Price fired the very first pitch, a 94-mile-an-hour fastball, square into Ortiz’s back.
Ortiz was not amused. Hesitation, angry smile, umpire’s warning. Managers screaming, tempers flaring. Everyone knew this was no accident.
On Oct. 5, 2013, Ortiz had hit two home runs off Price. Unusual, but not unknown. Except that after swatting the second, Ortiz stood at home plate seeming to admire his handiwork, watching the ball’s majestic arc into the far right field stands — and only then began his slow, very slow, trot around the bases.
This did not sit well with Price. Cy Young winners don’t take kindly to being shown up in public. He yelled angrily at Ortiz to stop showboating and start running.
But yelling does not quite soothe the savage breast. So, through the fall and long winter, through spring training and one-third of the new season, Price nursed the hurt. Then, as in a gentleman’s pistol duel, at first dawn he redeemed his honor. …
Eliana Johnson profiles Scott Walker as he explores his 2016 chances in Chris Christie’s backyard.
Scott Walker is already thinking about how to defeat Hillary Clinton. “You gotta move it from a personality race, because if it’s a personality race, you got a third Clinton term,” the Wisconsin governor told a lunchtime crowd of about 30 last Tuesday assembled at the Lakewood, N.J., home of Rich Roberts, one of his biggest financial backers. “The only way we win that election is to transform her personality to Washington versus the rest of us. Senator Clinton is all about Washington, everything about her is all about Washington.”
Walker is up for reelection in November — his third time on the ballot in four years, he likes to point out — but it is almost certainly his presidential ambitions that brought him to the Orthodox Jewish enclave of Lakewood, where he toured the town’s yeshiva and lunched with Roberts and his friends. Roberts has always donated to Republicans, but after selling his pharmaceutical company for $800 million in 2012, he began pouring a lot more money into the coffers of GOPers, including Walker, Senator Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Senator Rand Paul (Ky.), and former Florida congressman Allen West.
With Walker at his side, Roberts recounted receiving threatening e-mails after donating $50,000 to ward off Walker’s recall from the governorship. “With three days to go until the election, now I’m receiving all these threats, so what am I going to do? I wired him another $50,000,” Roberts said to laughter and applause. …
In a feel good story Der Spiegel reports on India’s experiments with a new pearl millet grain designed to end malnutrition in many parts of the developing world.
I may not make his family wealthy, but Devran Mankar is still grateful for the pearl millet variety called Dhanshakti (meaning “prosperity and strength”) he has recently begun growing in his small field in the state of Maharashtra, in western India. “Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill,” raves Mankar, a slim man with a gray beard, worn clothing and gold-rimmed glasses.
Mankar and his family are participating in a large-scale nutrition experiment. He is one of about 30,000 small farmers growing the variety, which has unusually high levels of iron and zinc — Indian researchers bred the plant to contain large amounts of these elements in a process they call “biofortification.” The grain is very nutritional,” says the Indian farmer, as his granddaughter Kavya jumps up and down in his lap. It’s also delicious, he adds. “Even the cattle like the pearl millet.”
Mankar’s field on the outskirts of the village of Vadgaon Kashimbe is barely 100 meters (328 feet) wide and 40 meters long. The grain will be ripe in a month, and unless there is a hailstorm — may Ganesha, the elephant god, prevent that from happening — he will harvest about 350 kilograms of pearl millet, says the farmer. It’s enough for half a year.
The goal of the project, initiated by the food aid organization Harvest Plus, is to prevent farmers like Mankar and their families from going hungry in the future. In fact, the Dhanshakti pearl millet is part of a new “Green Revolution” with which biologists and nutrition experts hope to liberate the world from hunger and malnutrition. …
The Daily Mail, UK with a story on the concrete block like package of catalogs Restoration Hardware delivered to our homes.
Recipients of Restoration Hardware magazine were left flabbergasted when they received the latest issue, which tipped the scales at a whopping 17lbs.
While some complained about the ecological wastefulness of the gargantuan volume, others saw the humor in the situation and took to Twitter to share their inventive uses of it – as a stool, an ottoman and even a weight for doing arm exercises. …
… In one Instagram shot, a young boy stands on the catalog, which consists of 13 ‘sourcebooks’ with more than 3,300 pages altogether.
He uses it like a step stool to reach the kitchen sink. ‘I knew I would find a use for these!!!!’ reads the caption. …
Late night from Andrew Malcolm.
Conan: Hillary Clinton said she and her husband Bill were dead broke when they left the White House. Hillary said things were so bad the two of them had to share a bedroom.
Conan: President George H.W. Bush celebrated his 90th birthday skydiving. So if you include Obama, there were two presidents in free-fall today.
Meyers: Obama surprises tourists by walking to Starbucks near the White House. Even more surprising, he traded five Taliban members for one grande soy latte.
Meyers: Oklahoma Republican Scott Esk wrote on Facebook last week that he’s “OK” with stoning gay people to death. Now, he’s in deep trouble with Republicans for being anti-gun.