Sorting out the liars

Have you just about had it with the whole Lance Armstrong doping thing? Are you sick and tired of hearing about whether or not Roger Clemens got a shot in his butt once in a while several years back? Had your fill of the whole Penn State child molesting debacle that's been resurrected with new charges?  Can't tell who's telling the truth between NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the players regarding the on-going New Orleans Saints' "bountygate"?  Are you clueless about what's really going on behind the scenes regarding the NHL vs Players Union negotiations?

Me too. There's a better way. Has been for a long time.

A little background story. (Because it happened so long ago, and I'm telling it from whatever is left of my memory -- I may get a detail wrong here, or have accidentally embellished there, but the gist of it is true). Way back when I was in 6th grade, during the Kennedy administration, the classroom was told by our teacher there would be a "science fair" in a couple months. Every kid could pick their own "project", but on "judgment day" we had to bring in an exhibit, show it to the rest of the class, and give a little speech explaining what we did.

I had no clue what to do. My late father, being an avid outdoorsman, was into hunting, fishing, and even trapping animals for their pelts. My exhibit wound up being a few different pieces of animals pelts stapled to cardboard, with a picture of such an animal when it was still alive in the wild, and a short hand-written note beside each detailing a few things about each creature. Of course, I got the latter info from that volume of encyclopedias every parent got conned into buying for their kids back then by a door-to-door shyster salesman, that would wind up on a bookshelf somewhere and never get used. But it looked good, and I can say our set got used at least once.

At any rate, my exhibit was half-way decent and, if I remember right, I won a white ribbon for 3rd place. Not too bad.

Until you consider who actually won the blue ribbon. That was a nerdy classmate of mine named Larry Bacow. Likely with considerable help from his own dad, he brought in a primitive lie-detector. It was just a little black box, with one meter on its face, and some kind of cuff that went around one's arm or finger with a couple wires plugged back into the box. And it actually worked. Every time. Granted, only simple questions were asked, but if a boy named Joe said his name was Joe, the needle on the meter sat still. If he said his name was Susie, the needle jumped. He tried it out on lots of classmates and nobody could fool it. If I remember right, the lady teacher wanted no part of that thing because Larry was also asking us simple questions about how old we were. Guess she had her reasons. Go figure.

While I would go on to become a retired shop rat and write this wildly popular and internationally acclaimed sports blog, Larry took a rather mundane different direction in life. He got his BS from MIT, went through Harvard law school, and got his PhD from Harvard's School of Government. He became Chancellor at MIT, then served 10 years as president of Tufts University. An Eagle Scout as a youth, a Distinguished Eagle Scout as an adult, elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was appointed by President Obama to the board of advisors on the White House initiative on black colleges and universities. Recently, he was named as a board member of the Harvard Corporation -- whatever that means.

The dude even runs marathons. (Google Lawrence Bacow to check him out. I did, and there was no mention of that lie-detector amongst his other accomplishments, but I was there back in the day in that classroom. And it really did work.)

Larry this, Larry that, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he was never that good at sports, and I'd bet he doesn't even have one single Princess commenting on HIS sports blog. I suspect that makes us about even in the long run.

Old story over and I'll finish what I started about sorting out the modern day liars next time. You already know where I'm going with this. Wish I did. Right now, I don't have a clue what I'll write tomorrow, but it's my rant, and I plan to see it through. Hope you check it out. Besides, chances are I'm probably weirder than you anyway. I've heard from others they read my nonsense because it makes them feel better about themselves. Huh. Wonder what they mean by that?