I read the Wall Street Journal for fun. I find a handful of articles in each edition that strike me as amusing or informative. Here's what hit me from Friday's edition:
- There are at least two Rock-Paper-Scissors leagues in North America. Would that be considered a sport for the Olympic Winter Games or the Summer Games? My competitive-freakiness was documented in this blog previously, so you know I'm up for any kind of competition. While the NFL injury report is laden with turf toe, hamstring and other leg injuries, I image the injury report for the RPS league would include carpal tunnel, jammed/dislocated finger and arthritis. I wonder if they have a collective barganing agreement.
- Contrary to previous conclusions, older brains don't work as bad as previously thought.
- IKEA stores have been in China for four or more year and are apparently faring well. I'd love to be able to read the Chinese characters to see how they translate those Scandanavian names they give each of their products.
- IBM, Sun and Oracle are lining up behind the OpenOffice document format for office documents as a counter to the existing Microsoft Office jugernaut. I'm actually using it on my home computer and giving serious thought to switching the church over to it. I hope to give my personal review in the future.
- The rules of the World Baseball Classic (which kicks off today) differ from other international competitions. Such that Mike Piazza was able to play for the Italian Team and a host of guys we know as Americans playing for the Dutch and other sundry countries to which they have family connections. The players had the choice of what team they wanted to play for and if you don't know by now, most of them opted out of the competition anyway. They are trying to emulate something akin to Soccer's World Cup, but there's one big problem. Major League Baseball is the preeminent league. The WBC is second, at best, to MLB. In Soccer, the World Cup is the highest achievable stage and the players need that noteriety to garner larger salaries from their club teams. The players who've already made it to the MLB don't
