RAGGED THOTS

"Primm said Owens underwent two traumatic events Monday involving his 7-year-old son and his fiancée, a woman he has dated for three years.

Owens' son, from a previous relationship, celebrated his birthday Monday, Primm said. Owens was distraught, he said, about not being able to be see the boy, who lives in California.

"He wanted to get together with the boy," Primm said. "But the boy could not come here, and Terrell could not go there."

Then hours later, a woman whom Primm described as Owens' fiancée broke off the relationship. Primm declined to give the woman's last name but said she and Owens had been dating for three years. She also lives in California.

"That's been coming on forever," Primm said of the breakup. "She's not a bad girl. She's cool, she's fine. He said, 'Can I take a break from the engagement?' And she said, 'No, let's just put a stop to it.' And that was a complete surprise to Terrell.""

"...Primm says that [he and Terrell] have forged a father-son-like bond that Owens seems to need. Growing up in abject poverty in rural Alabama, Owens was raised by his mother and grandmother and, according to Primm, has long been in need of a dominant male figure in his life.

...Owens "doesn't have many friends," said the trainer, who contends that the public and news media have long misperceived a man he considers "a gentle soul" and a "caring, highly sensitive" individual with a fragile psyche.

"He's a good person," Primm said. "A very good person.""

# posted by EdMcGon @ 8:15 AM

"Dallas Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens reportedly tried to kill himself by overdosing on pain medication, even putting two more pills into his mouth after a friend intervened.

A Dallas police report released Wednesday morning said Owens told his friend "that he was depressed." Details of the report were first released by WFAA-TV.

The friend, who is not identified in the report, "noticed that (his) prescription pain medication was empty and observed (Owens) putting two pills in his mouth," the police report said.

The friend attempted to pry them out with her fingers, then was told by Owens that before this incident he'd taken only five of the 40 pain pills in the bottle he'd emptied. Owens was asked by rescue workers "if he was attempting to harm himself, at which time (he) stated, `Yes.'""

# posted by EdMcGon @ 1:52 PM

Thirty-two of the forty biggest cities in the world joined this. But it's really something every conservative ought to be for because our whole deal is we're trying to prove that you can have a market-based response to this that cuts costs, increases profits, reduces greenhouse gases and generates jobs. And if you reduce your reliance on foreign energy, you also improve the national security of the country.

So that's why it's the perfect issue to bring the left and the right together if you really think of it in terms of how it is done. There are a lot of conservative petroleum geologists who don't agree with the Saudis and Exxon that we got a 100 years of oil left. There are an increasing number of petroleum geologists who think that the recoverable oil resources may be more in the range of 35-50 years.

Now, if there is an economical way to import and use less oil, we're foolish not to do it, because it will be almost impossible to take civilization around the world -- and the United States -- off an oil platform within 35 years. But we could be into a hydrogen economy within 75 years.

So this is an issue in which we ought to all just sort of look at the evidence and follow the reason, because there is a confluence here of economic opportunity, environmental responsibility and national security if we do it well.

Doing it with the cities makes sense because, while 70 percent-plus of our oil is used in transportation, it is only about a third of our greenhouse gas emissions. About a third is in electricity generation, manufacturing, about a third is in buildings. So, in the aggregate, of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, 75 percent comes from urban areas. So if we can prove that we can have substantial reductions in these larger cities in the world -- as I said, we have 32 of the 40 biggest in our consortium already -- then, obviously, every smaller place can do the same thing.

There's a little village in England -- since you guys have ties to the British press -- you oughta see if you've ever done anything on it. It's called Woking -- W-O-K-I-NG; it's about 20 miles from London. They reduced their greenhouse emissions by 77 percent. And the guy who did it is an Englishman named Allan Jones who has now been hired by the city of London to help to see if it can be done on a grand scale.

But anyway, what I'm trying to do is to find ways that enable us all to do stuff together that actually has an indisputable benefit.

And if you believe in the so-called Precautionary Principle -- you got a guy like Matthew Simmons, who was a big supporter of all the Bushes [garbled]-- he believes we have 35 years of recoverable oil. OK, so you got the Saudis and Exxon saying its 100 and almost everybody else somewhere in between. But in the 35-50 year category, there are growing numbers of people and they're not all Greenpeace guys.

There IS a guy who wrote a book called The Empty Tank, who used to be a petroleum geologist for a petroleum company, who actually went to work for Greenpeace because his companies made fun of him for his honest scientific analyses. So, he didn't convert and then change his analyses; he had his analyses and converted. Now you've got more and more petroleum companies looking at it. That's why BP and Shell and lot of these others are taking a different look.

You know, I'm excited about it. But I'm grateful to Rupert Murdoch for doing this. And I'm grateful that we're able to not make it just another Left-Right fight. This is something that we have no chance of dealing with in an appropriate fashion unless we can build a broad-based core.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 7:15 PM

"But seriously, I'm sure your statistical analysis is sound. However, I wonder how you measure intangibles, such as will to win, work ethic, intelligence, etc. Do those traits show up in statistics? What if a great quarterback is on a bad team? And what about charisma, fame and overall impact on the game, as in the case of Joe Namath, who became a cultural icon? Should that be a factored in? Broadway Joe probably got more women to watch football on Sunday than anyone else in history. Isn't that important? Is there a difference between importance to the game and greatness as a quarterback?"

# posted by EdMcGon @ 9:35 AM