Quick Roundup 508

5-3

I ended up not getting to watch the U.S.-Canada Men's Hockey game last night, but did get to follow it, and saw some clips later on. In retrospect, I realized something else brilliant about Brian Burke's player selection process: He picked mainly players for whom Olympic gold would be a first taste of really big success. That's a huge motivational advantage.

And then there's Wayne Gretzky's pre-game prediction of insignificance for the American squad:

Wayne Gretzky is predicting a showdown between Team Canada and Russia for the Olympic men’s hockey gold medal game.

"And I pick Canada to win gold," he told a roaring crowd Friday night at Molson Canadian Hockey House.

If I were the United States' coach, I'd have used that before last night's game -- along with that brilliant goalkeeper. That guy stopped 42 shots from the Canadians.

Our National Broken Record

Now that Scott Brown is serving as Massachusetts' junior senator, socialized medicine is dead, right? Wrong.

In addition to having to the threat that the Democrats will try to pass ObamaCare using underhanded legislative tricks, the Republicans could be waiting in the wings to finish the job of destroying freedom in medicine: Mitt Romney, the Republican governor who signed Massachusetts' failed mandatory insurance program into law, is lining up support for a 2012 run for the Presidency.

Until more Americans learn to think in terms of principles, those of us who do will find ourselves having to fight the same battles over and over again. One note regarding that last link, though. Leftists aren't the only ones who sound like parrots to me any more.

And you get to skip number six!

LB's post on "NYC by the Numbers" was quite entertaining.

And, yes, death-themed names for drinks do draw one like a moth to a flame, don't they? I once tried a beer called "La Fin du Monde" because of its name, and it was a favorite for a while.

Vintage Calvin and Hobbes

Amit Ghate points to a collection of what he calls "existential humor" on Facebook -- snow art from Calvin and Hobbes. The first made me laugh out loud.

-- CAV