An op-ed in Saturday’s Post caught my attention–it focused on how a culture of drinking is damaging sports, both professional and collegiate.

Toward the end of the article, the author explains what he thinks is one solution:

“A few basic reforms could help end the devastating consequences of combining sports and intoxication. Professional sports leagues, teams, stadiums, colleges and vendors need to review and reform their alcohol policies. Limiting tailgate parties, prohibiting open containers, restricting the amount of alcohol sold to a single customer, training staff to recognize signs of intoxication, and monitoring staff and customer behavior are among the reforms needed. Some colleges ban alcohol altogether at sporting events. Why should college football be saturated with beer advertising and drunken behavior? Ohio State provides a sensible approach to the problem.”

I wasn’t sure about this, so I thought I’d throw it back to the Ohio posse. Does Ohio State no longer sell beer at games? Certainly they don’t have limits on tailgate parties–having been an attendee myself at some over the years, I didn’t see any kind of enforcement or limitations. And hasn’t Ohio State had some problem with unruly behavior by students after games that has been associated with heavy drinking?

I know I’ve been off on a rampage about the teaching of “Intelligent Design.” But here’s a piece from the New York Times that explains more about the theory and argues that it isn’t a religion-motivated theory:

“Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.”

It’s nice to see this theory laid out with a bit more detail, and I am cheered to see that it is something that is being discussed by the scientific community. But it still alarms me that we’re hesitating to teach children evolution and that some religious zealots are using this theory as a way to alter school curriculum.

And scientific theory or no, I’m still putting it in quotes. So there.