I thought I might comment on a few interesting items from the news this week:

1. A-Rod. I quit following baseball closely soon after Nolan Ryan retired in 1993 but still have some interest in it. Pitchers intrigue me most with their arsenal of different deliveries, spins, speeds, and locations. If I played, I would want to be a pitcher, a strikeout king. How great it must feel to be able to fool a batter so badly that he gets called out at the plate.
   Anyway, back to A-Rod. As you’ve probably seen, this week he admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs in the early 2000s, some of his best years. I became a skeptic of baseball players years ago once steroid spectulation started hovering around home-run master Mark McGuire. Since then many players have either been accused or admitted to doping. A-Rod is obviously one of the biggest. Although I’m disappointed that he cheated, I have to admire him for admitting his mistakes and apologizing. He could have followed the lead of many of his predecessors and denied it until the end. I’m also disappointed in the players’ union, who Bud Selig says fought all his efforts to introduce mandatory drug testing for years. I get drug tested for my job. So do many other people. Why can’t they?
2. Anti-Smoking Bill. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Texas state lawmakers are working on a bill to ban smoking statewide in public buildings, including “restaurants, bars, shopping malls, and sports arenas”, according to the article. I fully support this bill. It would make Texas a healthier and more pleasant place for us non-smokers and would give the smokers another reason to quit. I would also love to see Congress double or triple the cigarette tax and use the money for anti-smoking campaigns and lung cancer research.
3. Movin’ 107.5 is Gone. When 107.5 first switched from playing smooth jazz to 80s/90s party music, I was devastated. I LOVED The Oasis and thought it offered music that no other radio station in DFW really offered. Movin’ played much of the same music I could find on other stations like 106.1 plus some songs from my junior high and high school days. After mourning a bit, I started listening to Movin’ when the mood hit. Tuesday afternoon, Movin’ abruptly switched to a Spanish-language station to address the large Spanish-speaking market in DFW. All the music people at Movin’ were fired, which angers me and makes me glad I don’t work in the radio business. It would be like Southwest suddenly deciding it was grounding all its 737s, flying A320s instead, and replacing all of us with new dispatchers trained on the A320. In the middle of the day.