The Class Award goes to the University of Idaho. Pretty much under the radar on the national scene, U of I had awarded a football scholarship to a high school running back from Washington (state). But then Jace Malek experienced pain in his hip. The diagnosis turned out to be a rare form of bone cancer.
Thankfully, by the grace of God and some mighty fine medical personnel and treatments, it appears Malek has beat the dreaded Big C. But his football career is over.
A lot of schools would have quietly thrown Malek on the scrap heap. What good is he to us if he can't play ball, would be their line of thinking.
But not Idaho. They honored his full ride scholarship anyway.
Sure, in the whole scheme of things, this was just one more incoming jock at one more college. There's thousands of them every year, and one more scholarship is a drop in the bucket. Hardly a huge financial burden for any university to bear. We may or may not ever hear of Jace Malek ever again.
But taken alone, this was a class act of the highest order. Bravo, UI, and may the force be with you Jace, wherever life takes you. Live long and prosper indeed.
Of course, for every commendable act, one of Newton's laws states there must be an equal and opposing force of stupidity.
This has to do with a TV commercial that has aired recently during various sportscasts. Pretty sure a car company is behind it, though I don't recall which.
At any rate, it depicts a yuppyish looking young lady backing her soccer mom vehicle out of her driveway. Nothing unusual about that. But then the stupid factor kicks in. Evidently oblivious to the possibility of any traffic on the road, she doesn't even bother to look. Put it in reverse and hit the gas, while still staring straight ahead.
Ah, but the feature of this vehicle that was being advertised was the rear sensor that detects the presence of any such obstacles. Sort of a modern day "Danger, Will Robinson" type of device. Sure enough, a beep sounded and Ms. Airhead finally turned around to see what was behind her. It was an on-coming school bus, of all things.
But what if the device developed a glitch someday and didn't work properly? Even the latest and most sophisticated electronic gear is subject to an occasional failure. It happens. The more complicated it gets, the better the chances something can go wrong. She could back into the path of a school bus, semi, cop car, fire truck, run over a pedestrian, you name it. And this nit wit would never know it until after the crash. Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to, you know, take a peek over her shoulder when backing up like drivers have done since "reverse" was first invented? Seems easy enough. But this one merrily and blindly went backwards until the beep sounded. THEN she looked.
Drunk drivers and texters are bad enough. But people that are this stupid have no business driving a vehicle -- period -- ever. And whatever car company aired that commercial should be ashamed of themselves for advocating such moronic behavior while behind the wheel.
I considered saying people like this should be sterilized so they can't spawn future generations of idiots, but I might get in trouble for that, so I won't. And in this case, it was too late anyway. The ditz had two of her own kids in the back seat. They had the same clueless look in their eyes. The light's on, but nobody's home.
So yours truly hereby dedicates the Stupid Award of the Month to whoever was behind that commercial. We've been dumbed-down in a lot of ways in recent years, but this is downright insulting to whatever little intelligence we still have left.
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