The Chicago Sun-Times had a wonderful article today about Darren Erman, one of my Zeta Beta Tau brothers from Emory.

Darren chose to give up his career as an attorney a prestigious Chicago law firm to chase his dream of becomming a basketball coach. His journey took him to St. Anthony's High School in New Jersey, where he coaches under Bob Hurley and teaches environmental science for 1/6 of his former salary. Despite sleeping on an air mattress on a friend's floor and living out of his car, he loves his new life.

Many of us dream of chasing a dream like this. Few of us have the guts to do so. There are times I'd love to move to Mexico, or go to culinary school. So far, those are only dreams... To those like Darren who take the leap, I wish you good luck!

The disparity between the haves and have-nots in baseball is getting ridiculous. When the Brewers are spending $30 million to field a team and the Yankees are spending $270 million ($200mm payroll + $70mm in luxury tax) to field theirs, they are no longer playing the same game.

Something needs to be done to reset the economics of baseball. What Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Oakland, etc. need to do is simply refuse to play for a season. Announce they are forfeiting every one of their 162 games. Until drastic steps are taken, the Yankees and Red Sox are going to be able to buy their way into the playoffs every year and other teams will never get a chance to compete. Sure, sometimes a particularly astute exec or some great young talent can keep a team in contention for a year or two despite a lower payroll. But those teams cannot sustain the level of play and feel compelled to trade off their higher paid and soon-to-be free agent players. This revolving door further deminishes any fan base, decreasing attendance, cutting revenue and continuing the vicious cycle.

Other sports have demonstrated how salary caps and better revenue sharing let all markets field competative teams. The Green Bay Packers hold their own against the NY Giants and Chicago Bears annually. The Sacramento Kings and Minnesota Timberwoves are among the best teams in the NBA. And fan bases for sports only grow when everybody truely believe that their team can win it all, if not this year then maybe next. But when they see it'll never happen then they lose interest in the sports and all teams will suffer in the end.

The Chicago Auto Show opened on Friday, so I checked it out with a friend Saturday afternoon.

After too many trips with people who couldn't last through the entire show (even the tiny Atlanta one) I've gone alone the past couple years. I'd head down there after work on a less crowded weeknight and stay until they closed--a good 4 hours to enjoy the cars. However, my friend was as into the show as I was and we ended up spending 6 hours at the Auto Show on Saturday! We got there around 4 and again didn't leave until kicked out.

I think I've now got a new front-runner for my next car--provided Alfa Romeo doesn't return to the U.S. by the time my Jetta's paid off.

The new Volvo S40 looks amazing, inside and out! The new model has a 218 HP engine available, which means it should be pretty fast, too! I plan to go take one for a test drive when they hit the dealers next month.

However, if for some reason uBid goes public or I win the lottery, I want the Maserati Quattroporte. I don't know what it is about Italian designed cars...

Originally posted as a comment to this entry on WatchBlog

Given the low number of votes Dean has received in the primaries thus far, his popularity seems to have dropped precipitously given his front runner status in polls leading up to the the first primaries.

But has Dean's support really waned as much as it seems? Are the primary numbers skewed vs. the actual sentiment of Democratic voters across the nation because of where the initial primaries were held?

Take a look at the Red (Bush) vs. Blue (Gore) states from the 2000 election. Of the 9 states which have held their primaries thus far, only Iowa and New Mexico were Gore states in 2000, and New Mexico by only about 300 votes. The assumption could be made that the Democratic voters in these nine states are more conservative than their counterparts in the blue states such as California, New York, etc.

Seeing as Dean claims to represent the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party," wouldn't it seem plausible that he would garner much greater support in those states that tend to be more liberal in general? I'd think so. But we may never know the answer because of the present primary system.

So much influence is given to a few relatively minor states that the nomination has practically be handed to John Kerry by the national media. Yet the total population of all the states that have voted thus far is only 26 million. That's less than 10% of the nation's population.

So maybe Dean would win California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, etc. The states with big populations that voted for Gore in 2000. But by the time they hold their primaries, it's too late. People have already been influenced by the constant coverage of Kerry's surge to the top. People are jumping ship from other candidates to support the front runner because ultimately, they just want Bush out of office.

Maybe for exactly that reason, Kerry is the best candidate to face Bush in November. Maybe a couple of those red states can be persuaded to vote blue. West Virginia seems to be ready to flip after seeing tremendous job loss in their factories, mines and mills. Others are close, too. But could Dean scare voters in New Mexico, Iowa and elsewhere that are more conservative? Maybe, if these primaries are any indication.

So what is the solution? Obviously, there needs to be some sort of changes in the primary election schedule. We need a system that gives more states a say in determining the party nominees. The current system results in candidates spending an inordinate amount of time and money in a few relatively small states that don't reflect much of the population of country in terms of most demographics.

To me the best solution would be to group the states into a 3-4 "Super Tuesday" dates, with a balance of small and large states; rural and urban; north, south, east, west; that each have similar numbers of voters casitng their votes each election day. Would it really be so hard to take away some of the influence of Iowa and give it to Illinois? Take away some of the influence of New Hampshire and give it to New York?

I guess I would have thought it'd look more impressive than it does:

Looks like I need to do a bit of a road trip out west:

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