Monday Newsbreak: 11/19

--All-time home run record-setter Barry Bonds was finally indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with allegations that he took illegal performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career. Since steroid use had been going on long before Bonds allegedly began using them himself, why didn't Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig go after alleged steroid abusers like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa during their big home run seasons in 1998-1999? Although Selig obviously had heard talk that they had been taking steroids, he instead used the home run chase after Roger Maris's 1961 season record as a promotional gimmick to excite interest in Major League Baseball, elevating McGwire and Sosa to the status of heroes. Up until this time, Bonds had been having one great season after another. After seeing how McGwire and Sosa were lifted up by Selig and the press to a higher lever, he decided to do whatever it took to achieve their greatness. Some believe that involved taking steroids. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I don't like (as I've written before on an earlier entry) the perjury charge, which I see as a cheap "cop-out" way to prosecute people when there isn't enough evidence to pursue a legitimate charge more directly related to alleged criminal activity.

--The United Nations delivered a report gravely warning of the devastating consequences of global warming. The current effects go well beyond any that cyclic fluctuations could account for. With just a slight further raise in the average worldwide temperature (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), as many as thirty per cent of all plant and animal species on Earth face possible extinction, according to the report. The question that serious scientists are now asking is not whether global warming is real: it is whether or not the effects of global warming are reversible, and even whether the warming itself can be slowed and stopped to any appreciable degree.

--Cyclone Sidr on Saturday struck the impoverished nation of Bangladesh, causing (at latest count) 2,300 deaths there. The number is expected to go much higher, but it would have been much worse had the government not forced more than a million people living on the coast to evacuate to state-run storm shelters. Otherwise, we may have seen a repeat of the 1970 calamity, when a cyclone striking the same general area caused around 100,000 deaths.

--The University of Florida basketball season has begun, with them winning their first four games so far. Coach Billy Donovan seems to have put a very good, unselfish team together after the starters from last year's National Champion squad graduated or joined the NBA early. Still, it won't be until they hit the tough Southeastern Conference league schedule in January that we'll find out for sure how good this year's edition of Gator men's hoops is.