Dumbledore - The Fallout

This is great. It's easy to tell that Dan Abrams is probably insulted by the idea of having to even cover this story. But you can catch a couple snippets of Mr. Knight, trying very hard to break through Dan Abrams' constant interrupting, saying things about "sexually confused boys" and "coming down with STDs." Oh goodness.

Now that Dumbledore went all John Amaechi on us, are we going to have to get a reaction from Snape or Hagrid? How do they feel now about all those times in the locker room before Quidditch games? We already know how Tim Hardaway feels about it.

I think it's pretty crazy about the uproar relating to a fictional character's sexuality. It's not as if she wrote it directly into the book; readers can believe whatever they want. All Rowling was saying was that when she wrote the book, in her mind, the character was gay, and frankly it makes more sense that way in the general plot. Grindelwald, back in the day, was a pretty handsome guy, I hear.

Has anyone called Sean O'Donnell yet?

In other news:

- Tuesday Morning Quarterback on ESPN posted a great column about the parallels between the Colts v. the Patriots and Good v. Evil that I know will drive Kevin crazy.
- This really should be first. The wildfires are officially a crisis. It's crazy to me how things go on for a while and hardly anyone hears about them until, one day, the media blows up. Same thing happened with Katrina. I feel bad for the Chargers, but I think football is a pretty low priority, compared to what else is going on.
- So nowadays, with $240 million, you can buy a little itty bitty percentage of Facebook. At least that's what Microsoft did. It's interesting to me that the price seem to be soaring sky high. Google bought YouTube last year for $1.65 billion, and now Facebook is valued at around $15 billion. How much profit is everyone making off of online advertising? That much?

By the way, if you all thought it was raining today, I assure you, it was not. Just a drizzle.

Quick links for you boys and girls

I was doing some more research last night into perspectives of the gay community and it took me at least 20 minutes to determine whether this site was a joke or not.

It is, thank goodness.

I also want to shove this down a couple of Yankee fans' throats. I can't believe they tried to run one of the greatest managers in baseball in the last 20 years out of town since the end of last season, and then ask him to come back. The Steinbrenners have some nards to do that, and he turned them down!!!

Sometimes I dream of Torre coaching the Orioles into relevance, but I know he's too smart for that.

The greatest part of this whole thing is the Yankees' worst times are ahead because now that potential managers know the pressure of trying to coach in the Big Apple, and because the most high-profile manager in baseball just got run out, no one wants to follow in his footsteps (that's you, Sideburns).

Does this open up the AL East for the bottom-dwellers? Of course not. Angelos the Demoralizer will screw it up in ways the mortal being cannot even imagine.

This is why I hate baseball.

Apparently, it's now cool to hate.

I think a lot of UMD students don't necessarily realize that The Diamondback has a website, and I'll venture a scientific guess that most of them - whether they know or not - don't bother visiting the page very often.

Let me tell you guys, you're missing a lot of controversy.

One thing I think people don't realize about the good ol' DBK is that they basically allow almost every online comment to remain posted - minus a few. One of the effects is often little battles are fought on comment walls that provide some stunning revelations about the kinds of people on our campus.

Such as our friend "Sean." Please take a minute to read this comment wall.

I find it rather appalling that there are people on this campus (who chose to come here, BTDub) that would have the nards to say this to a gay person:

"When you catch AIDS, and you probably will, that will be the end of this argument."

Well isn't that just dandy?

If the nooses and swastikas were a faceless symbol of hate at Maryland, this guy "Sean" has revealed himself! He's out in the open! He tells gay people that they're going to catch AIDS!

Look, I know as well as anyone else that some people believe that being gay is wrong and will tell gay people that they need to "fight it" or "turn to Jesus." Ok, maybe you're one of those people who just believes being gay is a moral issue, but you leave gay people alone. Good for you! I respect that. But some people have clearly turned the corner between belief and active hatred.

I don't think that anyone at the university should be terribly surprised with everything that's been going on lately, but my question is what have we all done, personally, to encourage understanding, or at least the ability to talk things out in respectful dialogue.

Diversity, whether in skin, culture, or sexual orientation, is something that will exist for many years to come, and how we deal with this issue will reflect on our generation's legacy. Prof. Larry Shinagawa told my class the other day that each generation will have there own view on diversity.

In my mind we have a few choices:

1) Ignore our problems
2) Fight people who are different than us
3) Try and get along as best we can through understanding

You choose.