Juicing leads to losing – in baseball
This year, not a single MLB player received the required 75 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to be elected into the Hall of Fame. This is only the eighth time this has happened since the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s inception in 1936. Known steroid users such as Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa were all on the ballot, and none of them were even close to receiving a 75 percent vote. The highest-ranked steroid users were Clemens and Bonds with 37.6 and 36.2 percent, respectively. This is a real turning point in the debate about steroids in baseball, because it shows that a majority of writers involved in baseball analysis won’t put up with juicing anymore. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would likely have been HOF players before they started using steroids, but their use does irreparable damage, and they will most likely never get in as a result.
Back to school fenderbender
Students at USM started classes for the spring semester last week with a snowstorm on Wednesday. But instead of canceling classes, USM decided to proceed with the day (individual professors did cancel some classes, but it was their own choice). During the middle of the day, a USM shuttle bus was hit by a car on the way from one campus to another. People on the bus didn’t receive and injuries and there was minor damage done to the bus, but it prompted strong reactions from students, who called out USM on its class canceling policies. The problem, though, is the judgement in severity of the storm. We live in Maine, and as such, we get plenty of snowstorms. We can’t and shouldn’t cancel class every time it snows. It’s hard to judge how severe a storm will be, so I can see why USM would wait it out. I think this is one time where classes most certainly should have been canceled. On the upside, the next snowstorm should prompt a quick response on behalf of the university.
Obama’s proposed gun control laws
President Barack Obama launched a massive proposal to overhaul gun control on Wednesday, Jan. 16. He called for a ban on assault rifles, as well as mandatory background checks for all gun buyers. The controversy of this can’t be overstated. Obama will have to fight masses of gun lobbyists in Congress for this to pass. As someone who comes from a family that owns roughly zero of them, I don’t know a lot about guns, or for that matter assault rifles. But I do know that there’s no tangible way to escape gun violence, whether it comes from an assault rifle or a handgun. As far as the mandatory background checks go, I think that waiting a few days for a background check to be performed and then being able to purchase your gun is fine. If you have nothing to hide, then everything should be fine, right? All I know right now is that I should have opened up a gun store a long time ago, because I could pay off my loans in a day with the money to be made in gun sales right now.